


The First Three Days

by ashesandhoney



Series: Jessa In the New Millennium [1]
Category: Infernal Devices Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: F/M, First Time, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-16
Updated: 2016-06-11
Packaged: 2018-02-09 02:28:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 38,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1965513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashesandhoney/pseuds/ashesandhoney
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the days after promising Tessa anywhere and everywhere on Black Friar's bridge Jem is still trying to find his footing, trying to believe that he can come home again, trying to remember how to love someone as more than a series of memories and stolen moments spread across a century. </p><p>This was started before After the Bridge so it doesn't incorporate any of those details it is about the exact same scenario. I suppose that makes it an AU of Cassandra Clare's After the Bridge scene.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Coming Home

James Carstairs had spent 130 years living below the ground in a world of silence and secrets and strange magic. He'd trained as a healer during that time for more than one reason. There was the altruistic one, yes, healers helped the sick and he'd known what it meant to be sick. There was also a purely selfish reason, healers spent less time in the Silent City than those who managed the archives or interpreted the law or did any number of things in dark corners. A Silent Brother was not meant to have their own desires. Theirs was a life of service. Jem’s desires had never entirely gone away and so he had spent every minute that he could above the ground. He'd saved lives and eased suffering and that mattered but he'd also been graced with the occasional sunset or the sound of a summer breeze through the trees or music drifting down from an open window and it was those things that kept him strong enough to get through to the next year's meeting.

He had met Tessa Gray on a bridge for an hour, once a year for 130 and he had built his life around those hours. He had counted days. He had planned what he would say. In his dark times, he had tried, sometimes in vain in the later years, to pull up memories of the sound of her laughter or the way her eyes lit up when she spoke of her children. She had been is talisman in the dark. The last lifeline to the person he had been before he became Brother Zachariah. He had held to that. Held to the fact that he had once been someone other than Brother Zachariah.

Since he had left the Brothers behind and found her again he had spent every hour near her. Three days without having to leave her behind and descend into the dark again. Three days of radio stations that played symphonies Three days of home cooked meals and take-away curry. Three days of her face breaking into a smile like dawn because he had done something as simple as walk into the room. Three days of kisses. Three days of sleeping on the couch because it felt like an intrusion to join her in the bedroom. Three days that were perfect and terrifying and everything he'd never thought he'd get to have.

He sat on the sofa in the front room of her flat. It was above a bookstore in London because she was Tessa. He would find out later that she owned the building and actually turned a profit on the rent from the upstairs neighbour and the shop below since the building had been paid for in full years ago. The space was simple but homey. A small front room with a sofa and a table and a bookshelf. Cushions and a quilt on the couch which smelled a little of dust and a lot like her. A kitchen barely big enough for the appliances and the table with two chairs where she pushed foods in cardboard containers at him.

"It's a green curry, it's a little spicy, try it, tell me if you like it," she'd say and then watch him carefully to see what his reaction was. Food had become an adventure instead of a necessity of life. She took her role as guide to the twenty first century seriously. He'd watched the world, he wasn't surprised by telephones or cars, but he hadn't participated in more than a century. She loved his reactions. Each new thing he liked made her face light up. Each new thing he hated made her smile and sometimes shake her head. Her appreciation for big band jazz was utterly lost on him.

"Maybe you have to see it performed," she said as he shrugged. "Maybe you have to dance to it to truly understand it. If there's a jazz hall somewhere on this continent. I'll find it."

The little domestic adventures in choosing what to have for dinner and having to call the delivery place back 4 times because Jem kept messing up the buttons on the cell phone were punctuated with long hours where they just sat and talked. They sat and talked about a world gone by. About fashions and customs and the fogs of London. Of people gone by as well. There was no one else left but the two of them who remembered Charlotte and Henry or Sophie and Gideon like they did. No one else who knew all of Will's jokes and stupid songs or remembered the way his smile quirked when he was about to tell a ridiculous lie to make you laugh. She would sit on the sofa and drape her knees over his lap while they talked.

He had trouble sometimes letting go of propriety, of what was right and proper and moral. He had trouble sometimes accepting that this was allowed. That he wasn't doing anything wrong when he ran his hand up the skin of her calves while she leaned her head on the cushion beside him and smiled. She touched him all the time and it was thrilling and terrifying because he so often found himself unsure of how to respond. Sometimes she'd catch the look in his eye as that uncertainty rushed through them and let go. She would drop the hand or pull away and his heart would lurch but he found himself utterly lost with what to do about it. Neither his life as a young gentleman in the 1870s nor his decades in the Silent City had given him any information on how to issue or accept the invitation in her smile.

On the evening of the third day, Tessa found him sitting by the window, watching the street, idle. He liked to be idle. He hadn't been idle in more than a century. Idleness wasn't an approved activity in the Silent City as they were meant to be in service to the Clave and when one served a higher power, one didn't watch the way fading light fell through tree branches. She looked out the window without asking him what he saw or why he was so intent on it. Merely, set her hand on his shoulder and considered the view of an ordinary street in an ordinary neighbourhood in London.

He reached out and slipped his arm around her waist and pulled her towards him. His head leaned in and rested against her stomach. He let the warmth of her and the way her fingers smoothed his hair be the only thing that he thought of. He realized what he was doing. He was trying to memorize this moment so when it was gone again he’d have something to hold onto. She smelled like laundry soap and lavender with just the tiniest tang of magic like spice in the air. She smelled like home. In one motion, he stood and wrapped his arms around her. She let out a noise that was half gasp and half giggle a little before settling her body against him with a smile.

"I love you," he said. He hadn't said it so plainly since they'd come together on the bridge.

"I love you too, I always have," she said and the smile changed into something deeper and warmer and different. Her thighs were against his. When she breathed in he felt her chest expand. Her hand was holding the fabric of his shirt, not just resting there. Her eyes looked like the sky as it cleared after a storm. He had never been so aware of anything as he was aware of her in that moment.

He hung onto the moment for a minute, letting the anticipation, that perfect tension, hold for just a little longer before he leaned down to kiss her.

Every kiss was a revelation, a miracle all of its own. He kissed her slowly and deliberately. Her lips moved with his. She had never been one to be kissed, no, Tessa Gray kissed back and she meant it. He smiled against her mouth and she pulled his lower lip into her mouth and bit down gently. The only possible response to that was to kiss her harder, to rediscover her tongue and her teeth and her lips. When he pulled away from her, his hands on her waist, her lips were parted like an invitation and her eyes were all desire.

"You don't have to sleep on the couch," she said.

"It didn't seem right," he said.

"It is right," she said. "Nothing has ever been more right than this."

"I know. I know," he said because it was true, "I have no idea what I'm doing."

"We'll figure it out. We'll go as slow as we need to. There is no wrong in this," she said.

"I could hurt you," he said.

"No," she said taking is face between her hands. "You would never hurt me. Never. I trust you utterly and completely, James. There's no place safer than right here. You and me, this is home. You are my safe place."

He closed his eyes. He could still feel the way she looked at him. He felt her like a current drawing him out to sea. And there was no where else he wanted to be. He hated being out of his depth. Hated feeling like he was lost or drifting. But if he had to be lost, at least her would have her to follow home. He opened his eyes and found hers so near that he could have counted her eyelashes. His hands moved without him thinking consciously and they ran up, over her sides and cupped her breasts. He stopped. Hitting some wall in his mind that said, this isn’t acceptable. Her eyes looked bluer than they had, warmer, there was desire there.

She wanted this.

That fact nearly knocked him off his feet.

That she loved him, he didn't doubt, that she wanted him to touch her like this was shocking. He hadn't had a body that truly felt anything for 130 years and he'd forgotten what that desire looked like in another person. As a Healer he could have itemized the biological processes of body temperatures and the interplay of hormones and brain chemistry but that wasn’t the same thing.

He remembered her body against his when they'd been young. She'd always wanted this. He had known that once but he'd lost that understanding. It hadn’t felt true. He'd held onto the love but lost what it meant to want to touch someone like this. Of the two, he’d take love but when the two twined around each other like this, it was a kind of magic. When he kissed her this time it was more than the physical expression of how much he cared for her. It was a request, a desire, a declaration. I want you to touch me. I want this, too.

She answered him by pulled him more tightly against her, sensing the difference though he would never be able to put it into words.

She led without seeming too and he was surprised to find that they were in the bedroom when he looked up. When she pulled him down with her onto the bed, he caught himself with his hands on either side of her shoulders. He looked at her, committing the look in her eyes to memory and when she grinned at him any last reservations, any last fears that he would hurt her or this wasn’t allowed or that he was somehow taking advantage vanished. She smiled up at him with her knees spread just slightly apart and propped herself up on her elbows. He could see that she was watching him like she always did when she was presenting him with something new. She watched for his reaction.

He sat back and put his hands on her knees and slid them upwards, watching her the same way. She’d tell him what she liked either by word or by gesture. He just needed to pay attention. Her jeans were tight enough that he could see the flex of muscles when she changed the angle of her hips and somehow moved her knees below him so that his hands were on the inside of her thighs. The fabric was rough beneath his palm as he traced higher, going slow. Her smile was a promise.

When his hands reached her hips, bypassing the space between her legs. She reached up and grabbed his shirt jerking him towards her. He lost his balance and fell into her with a laugh.

Warm, she was so warm against him like this, warm and soft and surprisingly strong as she pulled him into a kiss. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her all the way up onto the bed so her knees weren’t hanging off the edge any more. She kept them spread which put his stomach against hers and his thighs between hers and it was tantalizing and terrifying. He had no idea what to do with her, like this. He felt clumsy holding her like this.

“Stop worrying,” she murmured in his ear.

“I’m not,” he lied.

“You are, you keep getting all tense,” she said and her hand slid across his stomach, sliding up below the shirt to run over his skin. He did get all tense then, every muscle reacting as she touched it. She smiled and added a second hand, sliding both of them up under his shirt, over the trembling muscles of his stomach and up his chest. He pulled the shirt of and tossed it away because it was getting in the way of those warm, thin fingers and the way they seemed to make him forget his own name.

He was propped over her, his arms on either side of her head as she explored him. He tried to think of something to say but words were impossible in that moment. She put her mouth against his shoulder in a gentle kiss and then worked her mouth across his skin as her hands moved. She kissed her way to his neck. When she found the parabatai rune, gray now but never gone, a memory carved into his skin. She traced the line of it with her fingers and then her lips and then kept going. Her mouth moving lower.

Did she miss him? Jem wondered but he knew the answer to that, yes. Yes. Always. As much as he did if not more.

When her fingers found his waist band, she hooked them into it and looked up at him. It was a question.

“Can I touch you?” he said.

“Yes,” she said and her voice was different. Not as confident and self assured as it usually sounded, “Please.” It was breathy and his heart expanded at the sound of it. She wanted him to touch her. It was more incredible every time he stopped to think about it. She wanted this as much as he did. She knew what she was asking for and he didn’t, not really.

Her mouth was slightly open as he fumbled with the buttons on her blouse and reconsidered ever believing his hands were graceful. When it finally fell open he spread his hands over her body. She was soft to the touch but firm and strong. There was a warrior in that skin of hers, he’d always known it and he ran his fingers over the physical evidence, muscles and faded scars, until he found her jeans in his way.

His fingers were on the button and he paused. This was too much, wasn’t it? She smiled, undid them herself and arched her back to push her hips up. That little movement was the single most erotic thing he had ever imagined. He pulled the pants down down, they had to be peeled from her skin, she wore them tight, and then tossed them away.

He finished tracing the lines of her stomach muscles which trembled as violent under his fingers as his had below hers. He tried to memorize the lines of her thighs as his hands followed them to her knees and back up again.

“You’re going to be here tomorrow,” he said. He didn’t need to memorize this to hold onto when he went back to the Silent City. He was never going back. He could relearn these same lines again and again. He could hold her against him instead of in a fiercely guarded little box in his memories.

“And every day after,” she said. Her hands were never not on his skin. Her fingers on his face and his chest and teasing across his stomach until she found the spots that made him gasp. Just a brush of her fingers along his hip bones made him lose his ability to think straight. When she held his hips between her hands and, pushing his pants low, traced the line of those muscles with her thumbs he’d actually moaned.

He covered her body with his. He gathered her to him and just held her. He held still and listened to her breathing and the feel of her heart beat against his chest. She clung to him, her arms around his neck and shoulders.

He’d said it before but he said it again, “I love you,” and she murmured “I love you,” against his throat and then pulled his face down for a kiss that was gentle and surprisingly chaste considering she was down to her a pair of panties and bra and he had her pinned with her knees wide.

“I have no idea what to do next,” he whispered to her.

“What do you want to do?” she asked.

“Touch you,” he said and his hands on her hips and her sides were a promise that he meant it.

“Give me some space,” she said and he drew back. She pulled herself up to her knees, steadied herself with a hand on his shoulder and removed the last of her clothing.

She knelt before him completely naked and he froze until she said, “Touch me,” and then his hands found her throat and traced down across her chest and her waist and her hips. He cupped her breasts and discovered that any pressure on her nipples made her gasp and when he rolled them between his fingers her head rolled back and she moaned. She leaned into him and closed her mouth over his nipple and he felt a rush of sensation that he attempted to replicate on the softer skin of her body.

“You can be harder than that,” she murmured with her lips in his hair as he bent over her chest and nibbled at the skin, pulling and sucking and eliciting gasps and moans. He pulled her down with them so she lay beside him. Side by side. Nose to nose.

“How are you,” she asked.

“Perfect,” he said stroking the skin of her stomach again but always stopping just before the little patch of hair between her legs. She reached out and followed the same line on his body but when she reached the waist band of his jeans she didn’t stop. She opened the button and then paused, looking to him for assurance before she continued. He nodded and her hand slid lower and wrapped around him.

“By the angel,” he gasped out as she stroked him, her hand inside his pants. He pulled them off and she played her fingers over her in a teasing rhythm. She squeezed and used her thumb to rub at the base and then the tip and he tried to keep himself from falling apart completely. She played him like an instrument and when he came it was a release of decades of pent up everything. It lasted a long time, her hand on him, her body against his. He was crying into her shoulder when it was done.

She held him and stroked his hair as his body and his emotions calmed. Emotions still bowled him over sometimes. These days it was less like the hurricane he had felt when he’d regained himself after leaving the Brotherhood. More like summer thunderstorms of feeling that crashed into him and then rolled away. Something to be managed and endured but he would have bottled this one if he could. This lightening flash of sensations. He clung to her. Too tightly maybe. Fingers dug into her waist and shoulders. He didn’t want to hurt her but he couldn’t let go.

“Talk to me,” she said when he raised his eyes to look into hers.

“I didn’t know my body did that,” he said and though he had meant it as a joke, it came out as something almost painful. A truth said in the wrong words.

“I didn’t know -” he tried again and then stopped, breathing hard. “You’re a dream. A secret I kept from everyone.”

“I’m yours,” she said, “And I am right here.”

He slid his hand up the inside of her leg and didn’t stop this time. He let his fingers explore skin that was wet and hot against his fingers. Every touch brought a reaction somewhere else. He stroked down and her head fell back. He rubbed in one spot and her fingers tightened in his hair. His fingers found an opening and slid inside and she pushed her hips into him and moaned. He explored her body, not just there but everywhere. “I’m yours,” played in his head as his hands followed the contours of her calves and as he discovered the spot on her throat that somehow made her back arch.

It was slow and gentle. She whispered little hints into his ear and moved to accommodate what he wanted, somehow predicting what he needed before he knew. He was still memorizing but he was filing those memories differently. This wasn’t what was going to keep him going through the dark, this was the road map to her body and he had a lifetime to learn every curve. He would learn exactly how to make her bite her lip like that or how to use the knowledge that she was ticklish along the sides of her ribs.

It wasn’t until her hand was on him again that he realized he had gotten hard again and he yelped in surprise when she touched him there.

This time when he pushed her body into the mattress and she adjusted her hips for him, he understood the offer she was making. For the first time, he knew, on some instinctive level exactly how to answer it. He slid into that heat and wetness and wasn’t expecting how tight the space was. He paused, worried that he would hurt her if he pushed in farther.

“It’s been a long time,” she said.

“Is it going to hurt?” he asked her.

“Not in a bad way,” she told him and put her hand on his hip and pulled him against her. It was too much to resist and he pushed forward.

“Slowly,” she said to him and her voice was shaky.

When his pelvis met hers he stopped and just let the sensation wash through him. He held her close. It was an excruciating pleasure that flirted with pain at each little contraction of the muscles of her body but he held them in place. Her lips found his throat and kissed him gently, murmuring incoherently. He let some instinct in his body take over and started to thrust into her body, slow but deep. Her whole body moved with him from her fingers to muscles deep inside her.

He experimented, slower, faster, pulling out and sliding back, rocking his hips against her which made her mutter, “Yes, please, yes,” into his lips as he kissed her. His hands found sweat slicked skin and he couldn’t even tell if it was his or hers.

When her body changed against him, the careful rhythm of matched thrusts dissolving into something needier and more desperate he almost panicked. If he’d been capable of putting together a full thought at that point he would have pulled away from her completely. He’d finally hurt her. He’d lost too much control and hurt her. He stilled and turned her face towards him.

“Please,” she said and struggled a little. He had one arm around her waist and the other on side of her face at that point. He was bigger than her and his body kept her immobilized when he stopped moving. Her hips twisted futilely against his and she said again, “Please, don’t stop, please Jem,” and it was all he needed to hear.

He picked up the rhythm again. He’d already come once and he lasted longer than she did. When she came, arching and gasping and pleading against him he kept stroking into her. She’d told him not to stop and he didn’t. She followed the first orgasm with a second shortly after that left her body shuddering around him until he came again, this time deep inside her.

They collapsed together, a tangle of limbs. Breathing hard and loathe to break apart. She loved him and she wanted him and they could spend a life time wrapped up in moments like this. He knew that and finally believed it completely as he pushed her hair, damp with sweat, away from her face and kissed her gently. They found a position to lie in that gave them enough space to breathe without losing skin on skin contact.

Home. This was home, he thought and let himself drift off into the deepest sleep he’d had in more than a century.  

 


	2. Mornings

Jem blinked his eyes open knowing that he wouldn’t find solid stone above him but he was still a glad to find a white ceiling and morning sunlight. The bed was soft and warm and a hand slid across his stomach reminding him exactly where he was. He rolled towards her grinning because he couldn’t not smile.

“Good morning,” Tessa whispered pushing his hair back from his face. Her eyes were more blue than gray against the white sheets. Her hair was everywhere. He attempted to gather it but got distracted by the skin hidden below it. His hand spread out across her shoulder and then slid down to her chest, gathering strands and exploring the contours of her body.

“I guess we’re not waiting to be married,” he said.

“I’m through letting other people tell me I have to wait for you, James,” she said. “I have wanted this longer than I could even define it.”

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you too,” she said. “I’ve always loved you.”

He had his fingers in her hair at the base of her neck and he used it to pull her close enough to kiss. She melted into him, her entire body sliding close. She was soft and warm. He hadn’t realized he’d been cold for so long until he had her in his arms like this. Warm skin on her legs where her thighs moved against his. Warm mouth. Warm skin across her stomach where it brushed against a part of his anatomy that was waking up faster than the rest of him. He pulled her a little closer just to feel that contact more securely.

“Do you want to get up?” she asked against his mouth.

“Why?” he asked kissing her harder.

“You’re right, leaving the bed would be a terrible idea,” she said. They were side by side and her fingers were following the lines of the muscles down his back as she kissed him beteen the words.

“I know,” he said. “And this is a very important part of my education.”

“Education?” she rolled up onto an elbow so that she could look down at him. Her smile was bemused. He reached out to run his fingers along the shape of her mouth. He considered the notes that would play out this shape when he finally picked up his violin to try and commit it to music instead of memory.

He tried to look serious but the smile wouldn’t let go of his face, “I am being educated about the twenty-first century, cell phones and take-away orders and internet radio.”

“And this is just another lesson in that course of study?” she asked laughing.

“You’re beautiful when you laugh,” he told her. He could feel the way the laughter spread through her body. Feel the vibration of it in her shoulders and the muscles of her stomach.

“It’s a good thing you’re funny then,” she said. “Can I do something inappropriate?” She bit the corner of her lip and her eyes wandered down his body and then back up to his face. There was an invitation there that he couldn’t quite read, like something written in a language that he was just starting to learn.

“How inappropriate?” he asked.

“I think it was technically illegal in the 1870s,” she said as she moved away from him in the bed. He would have protested until her hand closed around him and he forgot how to think. When her tongue slid up the length of him he jerked a little and propped himself up on his elbows to look at her. The look in her eyes was tentative.

“Can I?” she asked softly and he nodded watching this time as she licked from the base of him to the tip and then again before she took him all the way into her mouth. He groaned as she sucked and pushed lower. His hips kept trying to push into her and each time he did, she’d wrap her hand a little more tightly around base of him to take the control back. She stopped long before he reached his climax but well after he’d lost any semblance of coherence.

“That was illegal?” he asked when her face was close to his again.

“I think so, I never looked it up. Immoral though, definitely,” she said.

“I disagree,” he said. “Not immoral. Incredible, maybe.” When she kissed him there was a little bit of a saltiness to her lips that had to be the evidence of the night before. His stomach muscles clenched at the realization that he could taste that in her mouth. He rolled her over onto her back and used his knees to push hers apart. She moved with him, anticipating where he’d need her hips to be so he could slide inside her again. She was wet and hot and not as painfully tight as she had been the night before.

He paused, breathing the smell of her skin and her hair before he started to try and find that rhythm that had brought her arching in his arms before.

“Harder,” she whispered into his ear. He had to brace his knees a little higher on the bed so that he could pull back and slide back in instead of moving from the hips. Her fingers dug into his shoulder as she muttered, “Yes, yes, please,” and spread her knees wider so that when he reached the end of his stroke they were pressed together and he was completely buried inside. She guided his hand down between them and showed him where to rub her to push her over into a moaning and arching orgasm that he felt shudder around him as he kept thrusting. She was shaking and holding onto his hair tight enough to hurt when he came. He collapsed against her, muscles shuddering. She held him as they relaxed into each other.

His head rested against her chest when he finally opened his eyes again. She was playing with his hair absently. Fingers tracing patterns across his temples and through the strands. She touched the runes on his cheeks, brushing them with the pads of her fingers on her way to run her thumb over his partially opened lips. His hands were playing over the part of her hip that wasn’t still crushed beneath him, he’d slid a little to the side but she was effectively pinned below him. She didn’t seem to mind.

He kissed the nearest skin to his mouth not caring where it was, just that it was her, “Do we need to do anything today?”

“Eat?” she suggested.

“Can we do that in bed?” he asked.

“If you want to,” she said.

“Anything else?” he asked.

“I need to shower,” she said shifting her hips. Her thigh where it brushed him was damp. He felt a thrill at that.

“Can you do that in bed?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “We’d have to do that in the bathroom but we could figure out a way to do it together.”

“Is your shower big enough?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “We’d have no space, we’d have to spend the whole time pressed up against each other.”

“That sounds terrible,” he said pressing himself against her.

“Awful,” she said and he could hear the smile in her voice. “Completely inefficient.”

“I think I hate efficiency. We should do away with it,” he told the skin of her chest as he kissed his way across it.

“When I’m sure that my legs will work, we can get started on that,” she said.

They lay together. He had thought that he enjoyed the chance to be idle but he hadn’t known that this sort of pleasurable lethargy was an option. The world beyond this nest of blankets and skin and the smell of her didn’t exist. There were no demons, there were no downworld politics there was no Clave nor deliberations on what his status as a Shadownhunter was. There was no Silent City suggesting that he join them again. There was just this space and Tessa.

She pushed him off of her, playful but insistent, and climbed out of bed. It might have shattered the little world illusion but when she smiled at him, she expanded that safe, perfect space to include the rest of the room. Jem watched her walk across the room making it part of that world with each step. He called her back. She turned at the door to the bathroom. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, half covered in the sheet and his eyes were locked on her. Her hair was long, covering her back to just the top of her hips. Her legs were long and the muscles of her thighs were well defined below the flare of her hips.

He motioned her back to him and watched her as she walked a curious smile on her face. When she was close enough he caught her waist and pulled her in so that she stood in front of him. She was completely bare but unselfconscious about it, as though being naked like this with him was as natural as breathing. She didn’t cover herself or look away. She met his eyes and touched him back as he looked her over. He kissed her stomach gently. There was a scar that ran down her side, he wondered where it had come from and he kissed it to. Just a brush of lips. She was smiling at him when he looked at her face again.

“You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen,” he told her. “I keep waiting for someone to tell me that you aren’t mine, that I don’t get to stay here. That it’s all been a mistake. That I don’t belong there.”

“I am, I am yours,” she said. “If there is one place that you do belong it is with me. Anywhere and everywhere. You’re stuck with me from here on out.”

“Good,” he said and he looped his arms around the narrowest part of her waist and put his face against her stomach.

“Come and shower, it’s drying and I want to be clean again,” she said.

Jem loosened his grip and stood without really letting go of her so that that they were standing in each others’ arms.

“I have every intention of making a mess of you again,” he said. “Not immediately but still, my intentions in this matter are less than honorable.” He was spent and a little bit exhausted but he really did mean it. He hadn’t expected the act to be messy, nor had he expected to like that it was. He wasn’t sure what it was about it that he liked, the tangible evidence maybe or the fact that it was so real and human. It wasn’t stark or polished. It was smeared on his stomach and running down her thigh and he loved that.

She laughed and he felt it through his chest and stomach where their bodies were pressed together.

“If you’re going to make a mess, you should clean it up,” she teased and pulled him towards the bathroom.

Her body beneath hot water drove him a little crazy. If his body could have kept up with his desire he probably would have found a way to lay her down in the tiny tub and take her again but it wasn’t cooperating in the matter.

His hands never left her. She had been right and the shower wasn’t large enough for two people. Moving around meant sliding against her so he kept coming up with reasons to duck in and out of the spray. She had tied her hair up with the intention of keeping it dry but that didn’t work. He flicked water in her face and then had to catch her when she slipped trying to shove him. They caught up against the tile wall below the shower head, stumbling and apologizing and laughing. She washed his hair, fingers massaging his scalp.

“Close your eyes,” she said when she pushed him back under the spray to wash off the soap. She kissed him under the water and he came up from it feeling a little drunk.

He looked through her collection of bottles and chose something labeled body wash which smelled a little like she had when she’d put her arms around him on the bridge. He started at her ankles and ran soapy hands up her calves and thighs, pushing her legs apart and double checking that he was being gentle enough. Her eyes fluttered shut and he kept working his way higher scrubbing at non-existent dirt over her hips and breasts. Committing to memory the parts of her that were soft and the parts that were all hard muscle.

“Clean enough?” he asked her when he’d finally worked his way all the way up and his hands were on her face.

“Dunno,” she murmured, “Might want to do it again to be sure.” Her eyes were closed as his hands slid over her body again working down this time from the hollows behind her ears to her ankles without ever lifting his hands from her body.

“Turn around,” she told him. She slipped her hands up his chest from behind, spreading soap and she massaged the muscles of his shoulders and back. He put his hands up against the wall to brace himself. She stood close so he could feel her brush against him as her hands kneaded their way down to his waist and then back up again. When she turned him around and very gently soaped up his overly tender skin he started to get hard again. She moved on over his thighs and then up his chest, seeming to know better than he did whether or not he could handle it again.

“I like you wet,” she said leaning in. The shower head was behind him and the water ran down from the back of his head, dripping off his face. She kissed him slowly, water everywhere.

“Hungry,” she said when she drew back and he wasn’t sure if it was a declaration or a question.

“Yes,” he said.

“Let’s make breakfast,” she said. “We’ll eat it in bed.” She pushed the hair out of his eyes and kissed him again before turning off the water and stepping away to find towels. He took a moment in the empty shower, his skin wet and sensitive, his senses mixed up in her, to marvel that this was something that had happened to him. In all the world, in all the things that had ever happened and ever would, he had been granted this. She tossed him a towel and he tried to remember what it was for as he watched her wring water out of her hair over the sink before wrapping it up like a turban.

He stepped out of the shower stall and turned her to kiss her hard, pushing her into the counter top. She had been in the middle of reaching for something on the counter top and looked at him with a startled smile. She fixed her towel and took his and rubbed it over his head. He could see himself in the mirror over her shoulder, dark hair sticking up at all angles, mouth open, skin flushed. When looked he at her, her expression matched his but she was grinning. He smiled back.

They found enough clothing to make it to the kitchen. Jem didn’t catch what Tessa had put on, she was wrapped in a green robe made out of some silky material that only covered her to the top of her thighs. It slid and moved in ways that were not conducive to thinking complex thoughts. He wore cotton pajama pants that he hadn’t tried on at the store and didn’t fit properly. They hung low and he needed to retie them frequently to keep them from slipping off entirely. His t-shirt fit better.

Jem had never cooked anything before coming to Tessa’s apartment. She didn’t cook much, ordering in most of what they ate or pulling it premade out of a cardboard box and sticking it in the oven. Her kitchen was well stocked but not well used.

“I can’t decide if cellphones or microwave ovens are the greatest invention of the twentieth century,” she had said the day before.

“Not airplanes or rockets to the moon?” Jem had asked.

“Those are more impressive perhaps but not as useful as microwave ovens,” she’d said. “I like it when technology works better than magic. It’s usually easier and it gives me hope for the future, that people are making the world better more often than they are making it worse.”

This morning though, they actually cooked. She had eggs and bread and a half pack of bacon that didn’t smell off. Jem did as she told him. Stirring eggs and watching the toaster. He set his chin on her shoulder after turning on the coffee machine to look down at what she was doing on the stove top. She leaned back against his chest and he wrapped his arms around her waist while she mixed the scrambled eggs.

“We should cook more,” he said.

“I’m a terrible cook,” she said.

“So we get you a book and you can give me orders while I experiment,” he said.

“And we can burn down the house,” she said.

“We won’t burn down the house. I like this,” he said snuggling into her and waving his hand around the kitchen. “People cook all kinds of things. We could be those kinds of people.”

“Be careful, Shadowhunter, I’ll domesticate you if you keep this up,” she said.

“I want to be domesticated,” he said. “I want to cook things and make the bed and I don’t know, garden, what else do domesticated people do?”

“Knife throwing and archery?” she suggested.

“I see a flaw in your plan,” he said speaking into the side of her neck which kept making her giggle. “You can’t domesticate me. You seem to believe that knife throwing is something that geriatrics should do on Sunday mornings.”

“Not in the morning and neither of us is geriatric,” she said. “Go get plates, they’re above the sink.”

They didn’t eat in bed. They ate at the little table by the window and Jem was surprised to realize that he was starving. He ate everything and then had more toast because it was all that was left. Tessa looked in the fridge and bemoaned the necessity of grocery shopping and a lack of fruit while he leaned against a counter and ate toast with jam. He looked forward to grocery shopping. It was another of the things that he had never done. He found that he liked not having servants. Everything that needed doing could be done by them. They didn’t need to invite other people into the bubble to buy the food or wash the pans. Not that they washed the pans, they tossed them in the sink and ignored them.

She poured him a second cup of coffee and they curled up on the sofa together. They had sat like this often over the past three days, her knees over his lap, her head against the cushions beside his head but there was something different about it now. His hands ran up and down her bare legs and she touched him with an easiness that she hadn't had before. He hadn't noticed how tentative she'd been until it was gone. They didn't talk while they finished the coffee. The silence stretched and fit itself into their little world. It was easy and comfortable. It was a silence that said, we don't need anything else right now.

She put the coffee cup down on the side table and then lay back on the sofa, her knees still bent over his lap. He leaned over her. The jade pendant at her throat had slipped down to one side and the fabric of the robe wasn't tightly closed. He had had his mouth on that little bit of skin below her collar bone not so long ago but something about it peaking out from under the green silk made it seem secret and new. He pushed the fabric away with his nose and kissed her there.

"I shouldn't be surprised," she said and her voice was teasing. He pulled back and raised his eyebrows in a question. She answered it, "You're rather insatiable aren't you?"

"Do you not want me to?" he asked worried that he'd missed some cue or was crossing some line.

"I want you to," she said. "I really want you to. If I don't want you to touch me, I promise that I won't climb into your lap wearing lingerie. I'm just wondering how many times you can do this in a day."

"I have no idea," he said. "Before today the answer to that question was zero. I'm looking forward to finding out. What are we at? 2?"

"Let's count it as three," she said. He had the urge to ask her if she had a record for that with Will. She would probably tell him. She'd told him everything else he'd asked so far but the question would change the moment. Instead of saying anything he picked up the pendant off her chest and turned it in his hands. A century against her skin had worn the characters on the back so smooth they were almost illegible. He rubbed a thumb over the remaining imprints. They both knew what they said and they both knew what that meant and that was the important thing.

"Can I ask you something?" he said.

"Are you blushing?" she asked. He dropped his face into her shoulder. "You are! What do you want to ask me that's making you blush after everything else this morning?"

"That thing you did with your mouth," he said and it was a little muffled by the fabric of her robe.

"Yes," she said and he could hear the amusement in her voice, she wasn't laughing but she was close to it. He didn’t have the sense he was being laughed at or at least not laughed at in a mean way.

"Does it work the other way?" he asked.

"The other way?" she asked.

"I mean," he took a breath and it filled his nose with the scent of her skin and that body wash and coffee and home and stopped his thoughts for a second, "I mean, can I do it to you? I realize the anatomy is a little different but in general?" That had come out awkwardly, he kept his head down.

"Oh," she said. "Yes, I guess, I mean, if you want to."

"You're blushing now," he said raising his head once he’d gotten an affirmative.

"I am," she said and then gathered herself a little and declared, "Take me back to bed Mr. Carstairs, make me earn it. One shouldn't blush at ideas when on can blush about the actual acts." She reached out her arms for him like a child wanting to be held. He scooped her up and carried her back to the bedroom.

  
He laid her out on her back and untied the robe. She watched him with more vulnerability in her eyes than he had seen there since they'd started this. He stopped. This wasn't nerves. She wasn't afraid that he didn't want it. She wasn't afraid that he would hurt her. He knew those things. He held her gaze which wandered over his face, down his body and back up. He was fully covered but he felt stripped bare by that look. It was his look reflected back at him. It was his need to memorize and catalog and remember in case he lost her again. His heart broke a little to see it on someone else, to see it on her face.

"Tessa, I will not leave you," he said. "There is no where else I want to be. I am prepared to go to war to stay with you if that's what it takes. I love you. I'm right here. I promise." 

She was in his arms then and it wasn't about teasing or passion. She held onto him like he was the last solid thing in the world. He pulled her into his lap and held to her as tightly as she held to him. They stayed like that for a long time before he laid down with her still snuggled into him. He kissed her forehead and stroked her hair and whispered promises into her ear. The kisses started gentle. Little promises of their own that deepened and lengthened into vows and declarations without words. 

He kissed his way down her neck and paused to appreciate what she was wearing. He ran a finger along the lace edging of the bra to the point in the middle and then down her bare stomach to the matching panties. Black lace against pale skin. He had been a healer as a Silent Brother and had seen people in various states of undress for any number of reasons. No one had ever chosen underthings that they thought he would like before. The smile she gave him said that that was exactly what she had done and she had noticed him noticing. 

"I'm supposed to make you blush right?" he said with his finger hooked into the very top edge of the panties. Her muscles under that point of contact contracted and the heat that bad been building back up between them threatened to overwhelm him. She was so beautiful and she was his. He had never considered himself a possessive person but in that moment he felt possessive. It might have been that moment of vulnerability and it might have been the plans for a domestic future or it might just have been the way her muscles reacted to the tiniest touch of his finger. It might have been any number of things. 

"My Tessa," he said even though he knew that it was what Will had always called her. He knew that whenever Will had said it she had smiled at him like it was a personal secret. He regretted the words as soon as they were out of his mouth. He didn't get the smile, he got intense eyes and her fingers on his face as she said, "My Jem." He stopped regretting it when she said those words. He kissed her once, hard, then turned his attention back to the rather fascinating line of skin just below her waist band. 

He left everything else she was wearing on and slid the panties off, dropping them over the edge of the bed. She let him take the lead and position her legs where he wanted them. She propped herself up against a pillow and watched him, blushing a little already. The pink flush down her throat and across her chest called his attention back to the black lace, pooling green silk around her arms and the necklace he'd given her so long ago there against her skin. He kissed the inside of her knee because that was what he could reach and then kissed his way higher. He stretched out on his stomach between her legs and looked up her body. He ran a hand over her stomach and he could feel her breathing speed up. 

"I love your every reaction," he said leaning his head against her thigh where he could feel the muscles tense a little as she shifted against his cheek. He smiled wider and kissed her thigh again and then the skin of her stomach just above the patch of hair. Then, because it was how she had started on him, he licked slowly from the bottom to the top and she gasped and her head fell back. She tasted different than he expected, not unpleasant but different from the way her mouth did or the skin on the rest of her body. Saltier and somehow earthier. He explored with his fingers as well as his mouth, kissing and licking, stroking and probing. She didn't say much as he did but she was far from quiet. Some things made her murmur and smile or push her knees wider and groan and when he found the right place to suck into his mouth her back arched up and she gasped out his name.

He chased reactions. It was trial and error and at first she she had guided him, telling him when to go lower or do something harder or softer but coherence fell away as he started to get a feel for her and what she liked. He tried to get her to repeat a certain type of moan or a particular way of twisting her hips. When she stopped him gasped out, "Please, please, too much, please," her body was damp and her breathing took a long time to calm after he had gathered her to him. He kissed her, knowing that that taste was still on his mouth. She breathed through parted lips. 

"Did I hurt you?" he asked trying to understand the look on her face.

She smiled which was relieving but didn’t push away the dazed look. Her mouth hung open, breathing even but deep as though she was trying to calm herself, "No," she said. "That was incredible, I lost track of where one ended and the next one began. I just need a minute." 

"Too much?" he said. 

"Yes," she said. "Not complaining but yes, I think I forgot my own name for a little while there."

"You can tell me to stop sooner," he said. 

"I didn't want you to stop," she said. "You've never done that before?"

"Many times, it's a part of Silent Brother training they neglect to tell you about before you sign up. Very secret," he said. She swatted him gently as he failed to keep a straight face. 

"I'm trying to imagine what that will be like when you get good at it," she said. 

"I think I was starting to get good at it by the end there," he said. 

"Oh, god, yes you were," she said. 

As she relaxed, her knee thrown over his and her breathing finally settling, they discussed other things the Silent Brothers gave secret lessons on including cheese making and origami and downhill skiing which Jem decided he needed to try. Then they moved on to a list of things that Jem really needed to try which included not only skiing but roller coasters and Thai food and movie theatres. 

"You know what else you need to try?" she asked and the way she smiled at him when she said it made his heart race. "It will require you taking off your clothes." 

"Sounds scandalous," he said pulling the t-shirt off while she pushed the too big pants and away from them. 

"Very," she said. "On your back." 

He raised his eyebrows but did as he was told. He didn't need the help but she leaned over him and closed her mouth over him, bobbing slowly until she got a groan out of him. She climbed up and lowered herself down onto him so that she was sitting astride his hips, balanced with her knees spread. The feeling of sliding into her body was familiar now but no less exhilarating. She held still once she had slid all the way down and he was at a loss as to what to do. He reached out his hands and touched her stomach and her hips and hooked his fingers into her bra to pull her close enough to touch her there too. 

She started rocking her hips and his hands closed over her hips, not to take control of the motion, just to be a part of it. After everything he'd done with his mouth she was closer than he was and he got to watch as the orgasm built through her knocking her head back and making her fingers clench into fists where they twisted in the blankets. She still rocked a little on him and the muscles inside her were shuddering around him. 

Her hair was starting to escape from the braid she'd put it in after the shower. Damp strands sticking to her neck and falling into her face. The robe had slipped almost off but was still around her arms, the bra was a little askew from his hands and one strap had fallen down her arm. She was flushed and her skin was damp. Mouth open, eyes shut, lips pink and swollen. He could see red marks on her hips and thighs where he'd grabbed her too hard. She was a beautiful wreck. She was his beautiful wreck. He tried to remember her as she had been on the bridge, wrapped up in sweaters and scarves, neat and careful and proper. She wasn't so refined now and with her half closed eyes and drowsy smile. She was incredible and it brought out every protective feeling he'd ever had. He pulled her close to him. Gentle. She lay down beside him as he slid out of her and cuddled her head against his shoulder.

"You don't have to stop," she murmured, "But you will have to lead." 

"Do you remember your name?" he asked. 

"Mildred?" she suggested. 

He laughed and laid her out on her back. The effect of the beautiful wreck was even stronger when she lay below him. She touched and sought touch, pulling his hands to her body when he broke away. Need and desire and just a beautiful wreck. He had promised to make a mess of her and was utterly awed by what that had turned out to mean. He wondered if he looked like that to her. Did she see the frayed edges of control? Could she feel how much he needed her? How much he liked that he'd brought her to this point? 

He answered her need to be touched, pressing as much of his body against and then into hers as he could. He was gentle and slow, trying to get every inch of sensation out of every movement. Her face nuzzling against his neck. The skin of her shoulder under his mouth. The way her hands grabbed his hips. Her stomach against his. Her thighs and hips moving with him or against him as he tried to find a way to slide into her farther.  
When release came this time it built slow and rolled through his entire body then hers. They came very close together. Even that sensation was gentler. He'd assumed that each orgasm would be much like the others and even that assumption had been wrong. 

She was disheveled and exhausted and he tucked the blankets around her and settled himself against her back. The robe had been lost at some point, the bra strap left an indent in her shoulder so he fought with the clasp until he could get rid of it as well. She was slow and heavy in every movement. 

"Do you need anything?" he asked, already half asleep himself. 

"Just you," she said and fell asleep tucked into his side again.

 


	3. Kitchens and Violins

Tessa dozed but Jem lay on his side and watched her sleep curled in a nest of blankets. He felt heavy and pleasure soaked like happiness was taking up physical residence in his body and pushing out everything else. Nothing hurt. He'd found himself awestruck by that after coming back to himself. Nothing hurt. It wasn't that the pain was blocked by a body half turned to stone by magic. No. It was an absence of pain. He stretched, his fingers touching the headboard above and his toes off the edge of the bed. A tight muscle in his back protested but that wasn't pain. It was that ache of using muscles in new ways. Nothing hurt.

Tessa blinked at him, "What are you smiling about?"

"When I had to take yin fen," he said, "I hurt. Always. Even on my best days the pain was there. Manageable but there, always. I'm enjoying being able to do things without my joints aching and my muscles giving out on me."

She put her hand on his face, concern in her eyes. Worry for a boy he hadn't been in a century. When he'd been that boy that look had haunted him. He’d seen pity when she'd been showing him love. He kissed her gently. A sort of apology for not understanding.

"Tell me something you've never told me before," he said.

"I missed you," she said.

"I know," he said.

"I don't think you do," she said. She took one of his hands in hers and held it in hers, cradled against her chest as she spoke, "I missed you every day. I'd see something that reminded me of you or hear a piece of music or remember that you like strawberries and it would be like a weight on my chest. I still can't throw knives. I have a huge amount of Shadowhunter training but I can't throw knives. I can't because you started to teach me when we were engaged and every time someone else tried, I'd be thinking about you instead of where the weight was balanced or whatever it was I was meant to be learning. I'd be remembering your fingers on my hand as you adjusted my grip and the way that you would smile at me when I managed to do it decently. I missed you all the time."

He could feel just the prickle of tears behind is eyes as she spoke and when she fell silent he asked, "Do you want to try again? To learn to throw knives. I'll need practice. We can relearn it together. Start our own little training school, just you and me."

She was grinning as she rolled him over onto his back and lay against his chest while she kissed him, "I am going to be a horrible student, they say you can't teach an old dog new tricks."

"There is nothing about you that is horrible," he said.

"Says the man who has not yet had to live with me and my pathological fear of laundry and dishwashing," she said.

"Laundry," he mused, "The woman fights demons and possessed automatons for a century and is afraid of dirty socks?"

"You can do the laundry," she said.

Jem wrapped his arms around her and held her tight. They had one piece of clothing between them and his body had noticed but he set that thought aside, "I like that plan. No, not really, what I like is making those plans. I like imagining sitting with you and planning what we will eat and whether we need to buy curtains and which mason to hire to redo the front garden. I can learn to wash dirty socks and I can learn how to cut lawns. That's a thing that needs done right?"

"I don't currently have anywhere to live that has a lawn but we could get a house," she said. "Out in the suburbs with green grass and a little white fence and every house the same and nothing else for miles around but little houses that all look the same. And there'd be a home owners committee with rules about what colour your house can be and how long your grass is and all the people have jobs in a city that they all leave for at the same time and all return from at the same time and sometimes -" It was obvious from the tone of her voice that this was not something she endorsed.

"I take it back, I don't want a lawn," he interrupted laughing and rolling her over. He missed how she did it but by the time she lay below him, she'd wrapped her legs around his waist.

He took the invitation and slid into her again. They started slower. Long kisses and hands everywhere. She smiled at him every time they made eye contact and he couldn't help returning it. He discovered that there were places on her neck that he could kiss to send a shiver through her entire body and that those same sots were a little ticklish. They were both a little giddy and he was pretty sure some of the things she did were just to test his reactions. When she slapped his ass he had to stop because he was laughing so hard. He buried his face in the pillow beside her as he let himself fall into helpless peels of laughter. He was still on top and could feel her laughter below him which made it harder to stop. He finally had to roll away from her until they had subsided into giggling.

"You are ridiculous," he said when he was breathing in something other than gasps.

"I can't tell whether that reaction means you liked it or not," she said.

"I didn't dislike it but I don't think I liked it in the way you intended me to," he said which made her laugh again.

He reached for her and made another discovery that distracted him from whatever he had been intending. Her breasts fit easily into his hand. He crawled closer to her and cupped them, one in each palm and her expression changed almost instantly. Squeezing gently brought a very soft, "Oh," from her. She did the work of taking off the bra that had managed to stay in place through everything else.

"This you like," he said.

"Oh, yes," she said biting the corner of her lip as he rubbed a thumb across her nipple.

"Come here," he said and lay back so that she could settle herself on top of him. She didn't sit back this time but braced herself with elbows on either side of his head. It kept their lower bodies pressed together but allowed her to make enough room for his hands to be cupped around her breasts. He massaged and teased in as close to the same rhythm of her hips as possible. Her face was fascinating this close. Her mouth partially open so he could see when she caught her tongue between her teeth when a particular sensation ran through her. He came first. He didn't even realize how close he was because he was distracted by her eyelashes against her cheeks and the texture of her nipples hard against his palms. He knew he was grasping too tight when she made a little gasp and pulled away from him. His hands found a pillow to twist into instead as he rode out the orgasm.

"What were we talking about?" she asked into his ear.

"I don't care," he said. "You haven't."

"That's ok," she said.

"Maybe, but lie back anyways," he said and she did as she was told.

He used his fingers. His other hand played over her hair as he watched her face again. She was sensitive, almost too sensitive to enjoy it and he had to be much more gentle than he had been with her earlier. When her head fell back and her muscles shivered he didn't try to push her to a second climax.

"Five?" he asked.

"Hmmm?" was her response.

"We're at five, we were trying to figure out how many times we could do this in a day," he said.

"We should get dressed," she said.

"No, six," he said into her hair.

"There's no more food here. If we want to eat we need to get dressed," she said. "And six needs to wait. I might not be able to stand let alone go for six."

 

* * *

 

Dressed and bundled for winter in London they went for an early dinner at an Italian restaurant. Tessa touched him the entire time. She held his hand, fingers interlaced with his, as they walked through the late afternoon crowd. She held onto his arm in the crowded train as they took the three tube stops to get where she wanted to take him. Every time the train swung or the terrifying crowd jostled she bumped into him and they both smiled. It almost made up for being in the train car but not quite. He found himself unexpectedly claustrophobic in the train car. Enclosed with so many other people and under ground. Again. At least the London tube at four in the afternoon wasn't quiet.

Emerging into the weak watery winter sunshine was a relief and the little cafe was even better. Quiet but bright and warm. Pristine white table cloths, fake brick, a little plastic flower in a tiny vase. It wasn't high end but the food was wonderful. He chose pizza. It arrived and Tessa waved away his knife and fork and insisting he learn to eat it like a New Yorker though they were a thousand miles from New York. It was so normal. Take a train, eat pizza, talk about geographical changes and London history. There were probably a hundred other people in the city doing exactly this.

Normal was wonderful.

And even if it hadn't been the touching didn't stop and that was wonderful. Her knee bumped his under the table. He put his hand on the table top and she lay hers over it. She leaned across the table to wipe sauce off his cheek with a thumb. It wasn't quite indecent. It would have been back when they'd been young but the waiter just smiled at them as though they were quite charming. He insisted they have dessert and Tessa chose anything with strawberries.

Walking, rather than taking the train, she leaned into him and he put an arm around her shoulder as they window shopped. It was still early and though the sun had disappeared the street was brightly lit. Post-Christmas sales dominated and there were still decorated trees and strings of faerie lights up in some shops.

He stopped suddenly. The shop he'd stopped in front of had an entire orchestra in the window.

"Have you played since you got back?" she asked him leaning her head on his shoulder and looking up at the display with him.

"No," he said. "Can we go in? Would you mind?"

"Of course not," she said.

The shop was aggressively modern and well organized. The first floor was all guitars and keyboards. A drum set that was large enough that it wouldn't all fit in Tessa's living room dominated one wall. Stands of scores and practice books. Technology touted as essential but none of it anything that Jem had ever used before. He picked up an electric tuner and turned it in his hand before putting it back on the shelf. It wasn't anywhere near what he wanted. They found strings upstairs and he smiled involuntarily at the wall of instruments. Violins and cellos and a double bass as tall as he was.

"Do you want one?" Tessa asked him.

"You say that in the same tone of voice as you used when you asked me if I wanted an ice cream bar the other day," he said.

"And?" she asked.

"This one, in the case here, is worth 2000 pounds," he said.

"I have a very good accountant who has been investing my money since the 1920s, I am embarrassingly rich. I'm rich enough I don't actually know how rich I am," she said. "I can buy you a violin. I can't buy you an antique Guarneri that your father gave you but I can buy you just a violin."

At the mention of the Guarneri Jem felt a sharp pang of longing, "Do you still have it?"

"No, James, as soon as you were out the door I popped it into a bonfire with the kindling," she said mock frowning. "Of course I still have it. It isn't here, I'm not at this apartment enough to risk keeping it there. It's in storage but we can go and get it."

Jem decided to wait. He wanted his violin more than he wanted just a violin. Although they did go find a clerk and talked her into letting him play a few of the sample instruments. Tessa bespelled the door so she wouldn't come back and try and sell it to them before they were ready.

He was rusty. His fingers weren't fast enough and he stumbled over bow positions and pulled the odd screech out with the notes. Tessa sat on one of the chairs set up at the back of the little room dedicated to the purpose of testing out the merchandise and smiled at him as he played snatches of things he could dredge out of memory. A little Vivaldi but he couldn't remember the second part of the andante and had to stop. A bit of something he remembered his father playing but couldn't place. A scale. Another. The arpeggio that went with it. Slower, faster, long notes followed by staccato bursts of sound.

When his clumsy fingers had started to remember where to find second position and how to make an A without dragging shrieks from the strings with it, he played her the song he had written her. There were things worth remembering for a century and this he had stored away. He could forget Vivaldi but he couldn't forget this. She was looking out the window in the door at some child arguing with a parent when he started. She turned back to him but didn't recognize it immediately. He could tell when she did and her expression changed into something both immeasurably happy and deeply sad. He played it all and she had tear streaks down her face when he was done. She was in his arms before he’d brought the bow down.

They bought supplies, new strings and rosen and a bow made out of some fancy material that the clerk talked him into. His own bow would need restrung and if he had a second he wouldn't have to wait for it to get back from a repair shop. He left the store with a bag in hand and a smile on his face. Playing. Even playing badly on improperly tuned sample instruments left him feeling more like himself in a way he almost couldn't articulate.

 

* * *

 

 

Back at the flat, Jem dropped his bag by the door and looked around the little space. Tessa had pulled off her boots and left them by the door and was in the kitchen. He turned and watched her as she poured herself a glass of water. He felt a thousand miles away from her and from himself. He had been one thing for so long that he wasn't really sure who he was anymore. She turned and he saw her expression fall into concern.

"Tell me," she said.

"I'm not sure who I am anymore," he said.

"I know who you are James," she said. "You're a hero and a healer. You're a musician and a better man than most people will ever so much as meet. The details will work themselves out. We'll figure out all the little pieces, together."

He crossed the room and took the glass from her hand before kissing her very gently. The miles started to disappear. He was a hundred years away from the boy he had been and the girl he had known then but right now and right here they were together.

His hands found her waist and lifted her up on to the counter she had been leaning against. It made her just a little taller than he was so he needed to tilt his face up to meet hers. Her jeans were still cold from the night air as his hands traced from her knees to her hips and then back again. Pulling back a little she rested her forehead against his. He stopped his hands on her knees. He wondered briefly how long they would have to be together before he'd stop feeling this unceasing need to be in contact with her. Maybe it would never go away. Maybe they'd fill a lifetime with little touches and moments like this. He could spend the rest of his life in this moment and be happy.

"You have unusual eyes," she said looking at them from only inches away. "They're almost black but there is brown and gold in them and if you look long enough there are little flickers of silver like stars in the dark hours after midnight. You're beautiful. You do know that, don't you?"

"I can't imagine anyone would think I was the beautiful one with you in the room," he told her.

"I do, I think you're beautiful, no matter who else is in the room," she said.

Her arms were draped over his shoulders, he stood between her knees and she looked into his eyes like they held the secrets of the universe. He hoped she found something there because he could see the whole world in hers. She pulled herself across the laminate top of the counter so that her body was flush with his and kissed him as gently as he had kissed her a moment before.

"What would you like to do next?" she asked him with her mouth still against his.

"Six?" he said. "Maybe seven too."

"Be specific," she told him. He stilled and pulled back to look at her face and try and figure out exactly what she meant by that. She continued, "I will do anything you want. I want to know what you want. I want to know what you like."

"What if I like terrible things?" he asked blushing a little to be asked to put the things that they had done so far into words.

"I trust you not to hurt me and I know you're too shy to want to do this in public and I'm not sure I can think of anything else that I wouldn't try if you wanted to," she said.

"What if I wanted to do it here?" he asked pulling her knees a little wider so she was perched on the very edge of the counter top. Without his body there to support her, she would have fallen forward. The look she gave him was surprised but a smile played at the edges of her mouth. She braced her hands on his shoulders.

"In the kitchen?" she asked him the smile wider but uncertain.

"Right here, where you're sitting," he said leaning into her a little. He was tall enough that the right places met with her sitting close to the edge of the counter top. A blush climbed her neck and she looked around the apartment. There was no one there. The curtains were drawn across the windows and the doors were shut. He realized he'd hit on a suggestion that she'd not only never done but never considered. That made him bolder. He liked the idea of something new. Something that would have no comparison point at some other time in her life.

Her jeans at her waist no longer held the cold from outside and he had his fingers on the button when he looked up at her face. The uncertainty was changing shape becoming a sort of anticipation. The smile winning out over that wide eyed look she'd had a minute ago. Her fingers twisted into the fabric of his shirt, holding him close and keeping herself steady.

"If you move, you're going to drop me on the tiles," she said.

"I won't let you fall," he promised and he pushed her hips back so she could sit more comfortably on the counter while he peeled the jeans down. They were tight and clung to her thighs. They'd looked incredible and a little indecent on but the experience of pulling them off was better. He left the underwear underneath on because they were dark red and looked too good against the pale of her thighs to touch just yet. She started to pull the sweater off and he took it from her, tossing it away. Underneath was a blouse that he pushed her fingers away from so he could unbutton it himself.

"Does all your underwear match?" he asked running his finger along the top edge of a bra that was just as dark red as the panties. The red fabric was silky and the colour vibrant against her skin.

"No," she said. "This is the last set of pretty stuff I've got with me here. After this it's all white cotton."

"You didn't buy it for me," he said. After all, she hadn't known he would be coming.

"No, I bought it for me," she said. "Even if no one ever sees it, I like wearing it."

"I like you wearing it, too," he said leaning down to kiss the skin just above the fabric along the line of the cups of the bra down and then back up over the swell of her breasts. There was something vulnerable about her being so near naked when he was fully clothed. He took a moment to look at her and she watched his eyes follow the line of her body down and then back up. She blushed under his gaze. Then he ran his fingers along the same lines he'd just traced with his eyes. His fingers down her arms, over her fingers, up again to her shoulders and down her chest and across her stomach where the muscles tightened under the feather-light touches and down her thighs. Her eyes were closed but she'd open them to check on him when he did something she particularly liked.

"Closer," he said leaning up and bracing one hand on the counter behind her thigh. She put her arms around his neck and he pushed the panties aside without removing them to push a finger into her. She dropped her head to his shoulder and spread her knees wider for him. At her urging he added a second finger and she shifted her hips against his hand because he wasn't hitting any of the spots she wanted him too. When her frustration brought her face up to meet his eyes he was grinning at her.

"You're teasing me," she said a little breathless and a little incredulous.

"Am I?" he said his fingers still inside her. He brushed his thumb over her looking for the right spot to rub to make her hips jerk she sighed a little in relief for a moment as he gave her what she wanted then that contact was gone and he was teasing again.

"Jem," she said half admonishing and half pleading. He did it again, just a little bit of pressure in just the right place for not nearly long enough. Her fingers were twisted in the shirt at the back of his neck and she started to pull it off. He had to break away from her to allow it. As predicted, she was leaning into him so far that he he had to catch her so she didn't fall when he moved back. Before she was balanced again she had started pushing his pants away.

Standing naked in the kitchen he had a moment where he realized how ridiculous standing naked in a kitchen was but then Tessa wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him towards her and he forgot all that against her lips. She pulled off the underwear and he was glad to be rid of it, as much as he loved it. Her skin was smooth and warm against his as she leaned in against him again, chest to chest.

Jem was temporarily baffled by the logistics of what he'd suggested. It had seemed possible but there were a couple moments of fumbling before he found the right position to make it work. He pulled her to the very edge of the counter top and she wrapped her arms around him which pulled her body a little higher. He had all the control. That Tessa could barely move, caught between him and the edge intimidated him. She held to him and buried her face against his throat.

"Are you balanced?" he asked though that wasn't really the question that concerned him.

"Don't let go," she said and he felt her smile against his neck. He tightened the arm around her waist and she said what he had really needed to hear, "I trust you."

With her held in place like that he could pull in and out almost entirely. He did it slowly a few times then faster. He used his free hand to tilt her chin up so he could see her face. When she was like this, just over the line into that place where their bodies seemed to make more decisions than they did, her face was an open book. He gentled. Instead of the harsher rhythm he'd been using he pushed deep and rocked slowly into her. She smiled at him and he knew that he'd read her expression properly. She’d have let him go hard but she hadn’t liked it. She liked this. He was intimidated again by not how much power he had over her but how much she let him have. He watched her carefully and asked little murmured questions. He would not hurt her. She had so much trust in him. He would not betray that.

He paid attention to his body this time and could feel when he was getting close. He stopped moving and caught her face between his hands. Her lower body was pinned between his and the counter top. She looked a little dazed. His hand traced down her body until his thumb found that same spot he’d been teasing earlier. He didn’t tease this time. Her release followed so close on the heels of his that they were both breathless and unbalanced. He had to her down to the ground once they caught their breaths.

“Being naked in the kitchen is ridiculous,” she said echoing his thought from earlier.

“I like it,” he said.

She led him not to the bedroom but to the sofa which was covered with the most un-Tessa-like quilt he could imagine. It was mismatched jumbled colours and fraying at the edges. He wondered what the story was. They curled up on the sofa together, much as they had many time over the past few days only this time they weren’t dressed. She sat close to him, skin to skin down the line of their bodies. He was a little self conscious of the nakedness. He pulled the quilt down over them. She whispered the story of how the mother of a friend had given her the quilt as a gift and he told her an old story that he’d forgotten he’d known of his mother’s aunt trying, unsuccessfully, to teach her to sew as a child.

“Bed?” Tessa asked him later.

“Seven?” he suggested.

“Yes, please,” she said kissing him and pulling him to his feet.


	4. Snowball Fights and Hotel Rooms

Jem woke up disoriented and it took him a long moment to remember what ceiling he was look at. The blankets were tangled around him and when he remembered why that was he smiled and reached for her. He was alone in the bed. There was a moment of something like blinding panic. She was gone. She hadn't ever been there. The last four days had been some sort of dream or fantasy and he'd never found her. But something clattered in the kitchen and he the emotions drained away. She’d woken earlier than he had.

In the little kitchen Tessa was putting out tea things and had her back to him. She was dressed in jeans and a sweater. Self-consciousness rolled through him. His hair was probably sticking up at strange angles, he hadn't put on a shirt, he needed to wash his face. Before he could turn to escape to the bathroom she turned and noticed him. She crossed the room and put a hand on his face and smiled at him.

"You're still here," she said as though it were the revelation seeing her was.

"I've no where else to go," he said which was maybe the wrong kind of honesty but she kissed him very gently.

"I do," she said and he wasn't sure what she meant by that. He smoothed out his features, hiding away his emotions before she finished that thought.

"I need to be in Bangkok on Thursday," she said. "And we're out of food here. And Magnus is back in New York after that debacle in Edom and I want to check in on him before he swans off to Mexico or Northern Canada or something even crazier."

"Of course," Jem said still hiding behind an emotionless wall.

She bit her lip and looked away and then back, "Do you want to stay here? I can give you all the keys and the codes. If you need some time to just be, you can do it here." He nodded slowly and after a long pause she continued on, "Or you can come with me. It'll be a crazy few weeks, you'll have to meet Lijing which is always an adventure."

"With you," he said faster than he’d intended and he let the tension that had been building in his chest drain away, "Always with you. Anywhere and everywhere. I'll follow you anywhere, Tessa. Even if that means being in Thailand by sundown today. Even if it means being in Edom by sundown today. Anywhere."

She grinned at him in relief, "Good. I want you there. I just don't want to push you if you aren't ready to be pushed around. I was going to start with York not demon realms. The old Ravenscar manor is still in the Lightwood family, it went to Cecily way back when and I have a storage room there. I don't even know if the current owners know but that's where we're going."

"Why?" he asked.

"You wanted your violin," she said. "I don't really have a home right now. I've been bouncing around when I'm not at the Library. Usually I keep it with me but I don't like to travel with it that much. It's there."

Jem smiled and pulled her against him, caring much less that his hair was sticking up and he wasn't dressed properly. That she kept the violin with her when she could meant something more than he’d expected it to. She tilted her face up to him and he kissed her carefully and then less carefully.

"No," she muttered into his mouth a moment later, "If we start that again we will never make it to the rental agency in time to get the car. Go get dressed." He laughed and did as he was told.

 

* * *

 

It was January in England which usually meant bitter rain but it was snowing in York. Tessa grimaced out the window at the swirling flakes but Jem smiled up into them. If he leaned into the window he could watch them fall from the sky. It was late afternoon and they were coming up on the strange bowl like valley that hid Ravenscar Manor from the rest of the world. Tessa signed a little symbol with her fingers and explained that she didn't want to walk in the snow so she was glamouring the car. They pulled right up to the old carriage house. There were lights on in a few parts of the house.

"Why don't we walk up to the front door?" Jem asked as she turned off the car.

"Hello, 100 years ago this house was owned by my sister in law and she told me that I could leave some of my things in her spare room and I was wondering if I might come in and rummage about?" Tessa said.

"Breaking and entering is better?" Jem asked.

"Easier," she said. "Maybe not better but I do have a key and we'll stick to the servants halls. It isn't really breaking."

Tessa grabbed his hand once they were out of the car and pulled him into the servant's entrance and then up the first staircase. They moved quietly and fast up to the third floor where Tessa used another key to enter a room with a closed door. It was full of trunks and boxes. Some labeled. Some not. One of the labeled boxes had his name on it in Will's handwriting and Jem froze. He walked to it slowly and ran his fingers over the very faded label. There was nothing to feel, just a paper label applied to a trunk but he imagined Will’s hands writing it and pasting it in place.

Inside was the old yin fen box. A collection of letters and drawings. His dagger sat wrapped in a cloth against one side. A sheaf of music so yellowed and tattered it looked like it wouldn't survive being lifted. One of the other papers was a Mandarin lesson. Jem couldn't remember giving it but he did remember 13 year old Will being intent on learning the language and refusing to believe that it was more difficult that Welsh. They had joked about it. Jem had claimed that Welsh was impossible but that English speakers could never learn Chinese properly. Will had attempted to prove him wrong and done an admirable job. Lost in memories Jem didn't touch the papers. He was terrified that they really would crumble. This tiny, tiny link to the past could fall to dust in his hands.

Tessa had gone straight to another collection of things and pulled out the violin case. The boxes there were newer ones made of cardboard. The violin had been packed in plastic. He had to blink back tears before he could turn to look at her.

"Can we take this too?" he asked running his hand over the outside box, afraid to touch anything inside.

She looked inside and gave him a bit of a half hug and said, “Of course, it’s yours. He kept everything he could of yours. It wasn’t much but I think I’ve still got it all.”

On the way back to the car, they had to duck into an unused room when they heard voices down one of the hallways. Tessa had tucked her head down against his shoulder as she tried not to laugh. She pressed close to him as they leaned towards the door to see if the way to the back door was clear. He felt a thrill just to be so close to her. Outside she laughed as she hit the little button to open the car and they tucked their things into the backseat of the car. There was a giddiness like they had just gotten away with something.

As she fussed with the little trunk to make sure it wouldn't slide around when she drove, he stepped out into the snow. It fell in lazy spirals from a gray sky. He turned his face to it and let it settle and melt on his skin. He was warm enough to melt snow. It was a strange detail. The last time he'd been out in snow it had gathered on him as it might have on a statue. Now it melted.

"It's cold," he said to Tessa. She came to stand beside him and look up at what he was seeing.

"It's snow," she said. "It hasn't changed much in the last century."

"Silent Brothers don't feel. We have enough awareness of the world to avoid injuring ourselves or walking into walls but we don't feel. The snow is cold," he said. She slipped her hand into his. They weren't properly dressed for winter and her fingers were cold but she was warmer than the air.

"I don't know that I will ever like snow as much as you do right now," Tessa said to him.

"Maybe you need more of it to truly appreciate it," he said. The snow here had been falling long enough that a layer of it lay on the paved driveway. He leaned down and scooped up a handful and dropped it on her head.

"You're a child," she accused as she jumped away from him and shook it out of her hair.

"I'm really not," he said grinning and scooped up another handful, packing it into a ball before throwing it. It hit her jacket and exploded. She yelped and dodged the next one, bending low to come up with a snowball of her own. She put some distance between them before he could launch the next one. His aim was better but she landed a few. One hit him in the ear. He swore, brushing it away before it could melt down his collar.

"You'll pay for that one," he told her and she grinned. She expected another snow ball and instead he ran at her, catching her around the waist and rolling her down onto the lawn. The snow covered grass crunched under them as he pinned her down. Her cheeks were bright red from cold and exertion. He sat on her thighs and held her hands down so she couldn't throw snow in his face. She struggled a little in a very distracting way. He forgot the storm as he leaned down and kissed her. Her lips were cold but when she opened her mouth to him the warmth of her flooded through him to the tips of his toes.

He dropped her hands to cup her face and she didn't break the kiss as she reached out and grabbed a handful of snow to mash into the back of his head.

"You don't play fair," he said shaking the snow off and pulling away from her so that he still sat on her legs but wasn't pinning her down anymore.

"You started it," she said tossing a little more snow at him which he brushed away with fingers that were starting to ache with the cold.

There was a sound of voices from the front of the house and Jem helped Tessa scramble to her feet and they stumbled back to the car, trying not to laugh too loudly. Once inside she started the car and turned the heat all the way up. She signed another spell and the melting snow dried leaving them cold but not wet. Jem grinned as they pulled away and left the old house behind. The remains of the snowball fight would be gone in the storm before anyone had a chance to see it. They pulled out of the drive that Cecily had once walked as a young girl and drove by the hill where they had huddled with Will so many years ago. Then they were headed back into town and a hotel room.

 

* * *

 

The hotel Tessa had chosen was nice, very nice, with a huge bed, a sitting area, a bathroom big enough to entertain in and some sort of fake fire that Tessa turned all the way up before Jem had even closed the door. He put the violin on the nearest table. They'd left everything else in the car when they'd checked in. Jem's fingers still ached from the cold but he kind of liked that too.

Tessa's hair was frizzing and she pulled her sweater off and tossed it onto a chair which made the frizz worse. She stood there by the fire, facing away from him in a sleeveless shirt that clung like a second skin and rode up just a little over her hips. He stared at that bit of skin above her hip for a long moment. He had planned to open the violin and play but instead he came and ran a finger over that skin. She leaned back into him and he wrapped his arms all the way around her waist and held her in a hug. He watched the fire and then closed his eyes and nuzzled her neck. She shivered a little and leaned her head away to make room for him. He started at the strap of the clingy shirt and kissed his way up to her ear.

"It's been three days," he said. "But you taste familiar, you taste like home."

"I taste like snow melt and rental car," she said in a faraway voice leaning into him a little harder.

"You don't, you really don't," he said and kissed back down to the top of her shirt to prove it.

She turned in his arms and kissed him back. He missed when he lost his shirt but he didn't miss when she guided him back onto the couch and pulled down his pants. Whatever he was expecting, he wasn't quite expecting her to kneel between his legs. He started to say something.

"You owe me just a little bit of obedience after the snow thing," she told him wrapping her hand around him and squeezing just enough to make his eyes fall shut. If her mouth had been warm out at the manor house it was nothing compared to this. She was gentle and moved slowly and evenly. When he looked down she met his eyes and he almost lost all his control. One hand snaked up his stomach smoothing down the little line of hair that ran from his bellybutton down and then settling on his hip when he started to shift in an almost instinctual little movement of need. She was too slow and too gentle and it was an exquisite sort of torture.

Remembering the night before he said, "You're teasing me." Had that only been the night before?

In response he got a mischievous smile that was possibly the most beautiful thing he had ever seen and then just the tip of her tongue running up and then down too slow. He could feel her hair on his legs when she leaned in. It was soft and tickled a little as it fell in waves down beside her face and onto his body. This heat was so very much better than cold but then he'd already known that.

"Stop, stop, stop," he whispered touching her hair. She looked up at him. "I want," he started and had to take a deep breath to get the rest of it out, "I want more than this. Bed. Come to bed with me." She released him and leaned up for a kiss. He forgot what he had wanted in her mouth. Her tongue slid over his and he not only forgot his own name but what names were for.

"Bed?" she said as he started to try and roll her onto her back on the sofa which was large but not large enough for it to be comfortable.

"Yes," he said and she stood. She was the one fully dressed while he wasn't this time. He didn't stand. He hooked his fingers into the belt loops of her jeans and pulled her back to him. She let herself be drawn in. There was a moment where he let his hands explore up the soft skin of her stomach before he unbuttoned the jeans and pulled them down. She had told the truth, she only had white cotton underwear left but he liked it as much as the red from the night before. His finger ran along the hem of it before he pulled that down too.

She had saved him the trouble by taking off the tank top and it hit the sofa beside him as he pressed his lips to a scar over her hip and then he worked his way higher, kissing a trail up her body until they were standing together, close enough that her knee was between his and he could feel the exact way that her breasts pressed into his chest. Something else pressed against her stomach and the little smile on her face was probably in response to that.

"Bed," he said again and then he picked her up and threw her over his shoulder making her yelp and laugh. When he dropped her onto her back on the bed she was still laughing. She tasted different when she was laughing he decided. They made it under the blankets and the rest of the world disappeared. She was the entire universe pressed against him. Brown hair spread across white sheets, skin too warm and too smooth to be quite real, gray eyes trained on every change in his expression.

"What did I do to deserve you? In this life or any other?" he asked her. They were pressed together but hadn't actually began the thing that they were in bed for.

"You deserve the world," she said. "You deserve everything you've ever wanted. I would give you anything you needed. Anything you wanted."

"All I want is you," he said.

"I know, I can't imagine why you would choose me but I know," she said.

"I would choose you because you are brave beyond imagining," he whispered kissing her gently, "I love you. I love you for your kindness and the strength of your love. When you love, Tessa, you love with your whole heart, that is so rare. I have seen enough people over the years to know that that is rare. I choose you for your intelligence and that bright spark of humour in your eyes. You are the strongest person I have ever met. The things you have survived would destroy most people. I love you for all that and so much more."

She looked up at him a little surprised as though people didn't usually say things like that to her. He imagined that most of them didn't hold her so tightly to their chests that they could feel her heartbeat but surely someone else in the 80 years since she'd lost Will had noticed just how impressive she truly was. He kissed her, trying to show her with the entirety of himself that he meant it.

"You have always been incredible," he murmured but it was lost in the kiss.

She pushed her hips up into him and a moment later it was all lost into the feeling of their bodies coming together. She let him take the lead, every action and reaction matched to his. He was starting to understand what they were doing in a way that allowed him to take that control she gave him and make something of it. Her body had a language of its own. An eloquent and nuanced language that was going to take him him years to master. He looked forward to every lesson.

What did that little twist of her hips mean? How should he respond when her fingers twisted into his hair? What did she want when she made that little barely audible moan? These were things he could learn. That he was already starting to understand.

It took every inch of self control he had to make sure that her back arched and her head fell back before he surrendered to the release that left him gasping into her hair on the pillow.

“I love this,” he said.

“This?” she asked in a sleepy voice.

“This moment, after, where you sort of melt down into a little ball of cuddly Tessa,” he said. He had rolled far enough that he wasn’t crushing her and she’d tucked herself in as close to him as possible. He felt her smile on his chest where she’d pressed her face to his skin.

“Ball of cuddly Tessa,” she repeated and he could feel the movement of her lips and way her chest rose as she breathed. He tried to find a way to hold her that was as close and as comforting for her as this was for him.

“All melted,” he said.

“Your fault,” she said.

“I know,” Jem laughed knowing that she could feel the laughter as well as he could feel her breathing. “It takes a lot of effort to melt a girl like you. I work hard at it.”

“I can tell,” she said but her voice was fading. He ran his hands over her hair and down her back while she dozed off. He held her close but didn’t sleep. It felt more important to be witness to this moment as though sleeping would wash it away and prove that it was just a dream. 

 


	5. Bubble Baths

Tessa had only gotten half-dressed before calling room service to bring them dinner. Jem had gone to shower after she'd found grass from the snowball fight while running her fingers through his hair.

He stepped out of the bathroom to find her sitting on the on the rumpled bed, facing away from him, a book spread out in front of her. Her one leg hung down over the edge of the bed and the other was bent up so that she could lean her elbow against her knee. She had brushed her hair out and twisted it up on top of her head to keep it out of her way. Wearing the clingy tank top and a pair of panties and nothing else she looked vulnerable and utterly intoxicating.

He'd left a mark on her neck that he didn't remember. There was a small purple bruise just to the side of her throat. She tilted her head to look at him and caught him staring. He had a towel wrapped around his waist and had been drying his hair with another before he'd lost his train of thought.

She bookmarked her page and then came to him walking slowly across the heavy cream coloured rug in bare feet. The fire burned merry and fake behind her and the room that had been warm started to feel too hot. She moved gracefully and he found himself considering every muscle in her legs and how they worked to make walking possible.

"I love your legs," he said and then blinked hard because that was an atrociously stupid thing to say.

"I love these muscles," she said when she was close enough to run a finger up over his abdomen. He twisted the towel in his hands a little tighter so he didn't grab her. His hair was dripping onto his shoulders. Each drop hit on a nerve. A little distraction up against the larger sensation of her hand flattening on his chest just over his heart.

Braced against his chest, she leaned close and he thought she was about to whisper something. Instead she licked one of the escaping drops of water when it started to run off his shoulder. He tensed as though she'd burned him. She caught another on his collarbone and he dropped the towel and twisted his fingers into her flimsy shirt instead, pulling her close. Her hands were on his arms as she worked her way across his chest, lips and tongue against skin. With his eyes closed, the rest of the world disappeared. The only things that were real were the points where her skin touched his.

"Room service," came from the door with a knock.

"Fuck," Tessa muttered as he tried to remember what knocking meant then whether he had ever heard Tessa swear before.

"You can't open the door like that," he said as she disentangled herself from him. She looked down as though surprised by how little she was wearing. The tank top was twisted from his hands and left most of her stomach bare. He did not reach out to touch her there but it took most of his self control to keep his hands down. She was just as disoriented as he was to be interrupted. He hoped confusion was half as endearing on him as it was on her.

She slid by him into the bathroom and helped herself to one of the complimentary robes on the back of the door and then slid by him again on the way to the door. There was no reason that she needed to rub her entire body against his as she walked by but she did it again when she realized that she'd forgotten her purse on the way to the door. He was disoriented again by the time she made it to the door with the robe tied shut and her money in hand.

The room service attendant very pointedly said nothing about the robe nor the brazen mark on her throat, nor Jem standing still dazed in his towel. He ducked back into the bathroom and blushed hard. Tessa paid and rolled the cart back to the main part of the room. He was still blushing by the time he'd finished drying his hair and found another robe. He didn't want to get dressed but he was now too embarrassed to wander around uncovered. The little knowing smirk on the face of the man at the door came back to him and he could feel the flush like a physical thing climbing his neck.

"Are you alright?" Tessa asked him.

"He knew exactly what we had been doing," Jem said.

A little blush crawled up the side of Tessa's neck but she shrugged it off and opened up the food. Jem couldn't remember what they'd order and wasn't sure he cared.

Sitting back with a bowl of something in her hand Tessa pointed her spoon at him, "You know what that means?"

"That the staff are all discussing the couple in 403?" he said and then his face broke into a wide smile.

"You were so embarrassed you were barely breathing and now you look like the cat that ate the canary," Tessa said whatever she'd been about to say forgotten in the face of his giddy grin.

"We're the couple in 403," he said helping himself to a slice of tomato sitting on top of a salad and eating it thoughtfully.

"We are," she said and her smile matched his now as she realized what he was smiling about.

"I like being 'the couple' just about anywhere," he said.

"Where do you want to go next?" she asked.

"Back to bed?" he said.

"And then?" she said.

"That bathtub looked big enough for two," he said and that got a reaction from her. Her eyes lit up with desire and mischief as she glanced at the bathroom door. She bit her lip and looked back at him and he attempted to waggle his eyebrows which sent her into peels of laughter. She had to put down her soup so she didn't spill it.

"I was talking about whether there was anywhere you wanted to go before Thailand," she said. "But I think I could just spend the next week in that bathtub with you instead."

"How about we find another bathtub in Thailand?" he said. "Or a beach. You probably look excellent in a bikini."

"I don’t know about that," she smirked, "but I know that I burn to a crispy bright red," she said gesturing with her spoon again.

"Don't they sell things to stop sunburns?" he said.

"You're going to help me put sunscreen on?" she asked.

"That would involve rubbing lotion all over your skin, right?" he said. "I could do that for you, if you really needed me to."

She was laughing again, "The sacrifices you are willing to make for my well being are inspiring." A look passed between them but neither of them mentioned it. He had made sacrifices for her well being. His entire life he'd been making sacrifices for her well being. She had been sitting across from him with the food between them but she came to sit beside him, tucking herself in close to his side. He dropped an arm around her and continued to pick at the food one handed.

When the little food cart was empty, Tessa pushed it away with her foot. It rolled about a foot before the carpet stopped the wheels but it gave her enough space to swing her legs out and around and drop them over Jem's lap. Her robe had been abandoned though he still wore his. He ran his hands over the muscles that he had been so fascinated by before. Ankle, calf, knee, thigh and then back down again.

"Why do you watch me like that?" he asked her. She had her eyes trained on his face, a very small smile on the corner of her lips. He kept his hand moving over her skin while he spoke but his hands stayed on the outside of her thighs because it was the only way he could remember how to form coherent words.  

"You're very expressive," she said touching his cheek, just below the scars on his face, "Your thoughts are written across your features. I'm making lists."

"Lists?" his hand stilled on her knee and he knew he looked puzzled.

"Of what you like," she said. "It's a long list."

"It's a short list," he argued. "I like you. Now lie down and let me show you what I'd like to do to you."

He pushed her down onto the cushions and grabbed one of her ankles and used it to pull her closer. When he released her, she put it up over the back of the sofa to keep it out their way. He leaned down over her and kissed her neck from the little hickey down in a line that led between her breasts and across her stomach. She was so alive, warm and shifting below him. He stopped with his mouth on her stomach, just above the line of the underwear. He nuzzled her and she ran her fingers through his hair. He sucked the skin there into his mouth just a little. She made a little noise in her throat and he increased the pressure.

"You bruise easy," he said stroking the mark he'd left. She gave him a sleepy smile, eyes swimming in desire.

He pulled away the last of her clothing and then put his mouth back to her skin a little lower than before biting just enough to make her gasp. Half sitting as he was, the thigh thrown over the sofa was too near to be ignored. He kissed her knee and then left a trail of little red marks down the inside of her leg. By the time he reached the little hollow spot before her leg ended and other things began she was squirming for him to do more. There was a knife's edge moment where they watched each other before he ran his tongue over her and she groaned, her head falling back.

He wasn't gentle but he watched her carefully each time he grazed his teeth over her or rubbed harder. Her fingers were twisted in his hair tight enough to hurt but asking her to let go would mean stopping and she was too close for him to do that. He loved these moments when she shook apart in an explosion of gasping and twisting hips.

He could have stopped there but he didn't. She groaned louder and her hands fluttered away from his hair to clamp over her mouth as she tried to smother a near scream. He did stop and nuzzled her gently, one hand flat on her stomach. A moment before he’d been using it to hold her still, now he comforted shuddering muscles with gentle strokes.

"Do you think anyone heard that?" she asked quietly.

"I think they probably heard that in Idris," he said.

"Well, at least the staff of this hotel will have something to talk about tonight," she said then she stood up slowly and wavered. He caught her bare hip to steady her. She touched his face and then leaned down to kiss him in a way that was almost shatteringly gentle after the force of what he'd just done to her.

"Where are you going?" he asked when she started to pull away. His fingers tightened on her hip. He wasn't ready to not be touching her yet.

"To run a bath," she said mischief back in her eyes. He didn't release her but he stood. The need to be close to her was near compulsive and he followed her into the bathroom with his hands on her waist.

The bathtub had been designed for more than one person. It was huge and not shaped like a traditional tub. Tessa turned the taps to high and rummaged in the little box of tiny shampoos and things left by the hotel. She chose something and squeezed it into the water, watching bubbles start to form. The room was already humid from the shower he had taken earlier and they left the door cracked so that air could get in. Condensation built on the mirrors and the blue tile that surrounded the tub anyways. The lights had a setting to be turned down but not off. The room had been designed for this. Jem wondered idly how many other couples had done this here. He couldn’t decide if he liked the thought or not.

It took a long time for the tub to fill and Jem sat on the edge of it with his toes in the rising water. He pushed bubbles that smelled faintly lemony around with his foot. Tessa had disappeared again but hadn't dressed. She moved around him as though naked was a perfectly natural thing to be in his presence. He trailed his fingers over her every time she was close enough to touch.

He didn't hear her enter the room over the sound of the water and she surprised him when she climbed up onto the high edge of the tub to sit beside him and pass him a glass of wine. Her hair was still up though it was messier than it had been and she sat close enough that her thigh was against his and her shoulder rested on his arm.

"Shall we toast?" she asked holding up and tilting the glass so the red liquid sparkled a little in the half light of the room.

"To miracles?" he suggested.

"To second chances at first love," she said.

"Yes, to that," he said as he raised the glass to her.

After a sip she left the wine on the side of the tub and slid into the water, disappearing below the bubbles. She turned off the taps and in the wake of the silence he dropped off the robe and came to join her. The water was hot and the bubbles stuck to his shoulders. He had planned to reach for her but he took a moment to close his eyes and just drift in the water for a moment. He liked showers but he hadn’t had a bath since before the Brothers. It was like rediscovering something simple and wonderful.

Her hands found him under the bubbles, running up his sides and across his chest to cup his neck and turn him to face her. That part hadn’t been in any of the baths he’d ever had before.

"I'm going to tell you a secret," she said softly and he nodded, "I have had this fantasy many, many times before." He opened his eyes to look at her. She was nose to nose with him and though she was smiling, she wasn't joking. "I sometimes run a bath and put on violin music and pretend that maybe someday I could have you there." She paused, readjusting her grip on his neck so she could pull herself closer to him before continuing, "People say sometimes that your fantasies won't ever live up to reality but this is so much better than I could have imagined." He had sat on the floor of the tub and she was now straddling him in the water. Her breasts brushed his chest and then his arms were around her, pulling her tight to him.

"This is a very good fantasy," he said before he kissed her. She wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist as she kissed him back, hard.

Her body was almost the same temperature as the water which moved around them caressing and warm as skin. When she reached down and eased herself on to him, they both groaned. She rocked in the water, sending currents eddying around their bodies. Jem steadied her so they didn't both fall over and go under.

He wanted to push back against the rocking, to force her to go harder but his hips were pinned by the angle. The intensity built against his need and the water left him feeling like she was everywhere around him. She came first after everything he’d done to her on the couch it didn’t take long. Her body shuddered and then collapsed against him. He was so close to his own release that her shuddering stillness made him a little crazy. He gathered her to roll her over and almost forgot that rolling her onto her back would put her under the water.

"Don't drown girls you love," he said aloud in a moment of half madness.

"Jem?" she asked him, her hand on his face as he stopped in the middle of the motion.

"Do you need to stop?" he asked. She shook her head. He had figured out what he was going to do with her. He picked her up and found the little bench at the back of the tub. He took a steadying breath but it didn't calm him much. She sat with her head and shoulders above the disappearing bubbles and he knelt in front of her. The angle wasn't easy but he didn't really care. Her legs were up and around him, half floating, half braced against his hips.

He whispered into her ear before he started, "Tell me if I'm too rough with you." She held on to him and whispered his name over and over. He'd heard sex referred to as "taking a woman" before but he'd never really understood the phrasing until that moment. He took her hard and fast and came just as hard, feeling it through his entire body.

"Wow," she said laying her cheek against his chest he wondered if she could actually feel his heart hammering against her cheek. He came to sit beside her on the little seat which had been intended for this not what they’d just used it for. She sat beside him but her legs were tangled with his, her foot tracing up and down his leg. She rested her head against his shoulder, her hair was up but it was damp and it stuck to his skin where it had fallen out in long coils. The bubbles were almost gone and a strand of her hair was floating in the water in front of them. He picked it up and ran it through his fingers. Hair was different under water, he decided.

"What other fantasies do you have?" he asked her as she ran her hand, fingers wrinkled from being underwater so long, over his chest and down his arm to where her hair wrapped around his fingers. The half light made her wet skin shine.

"All kinds, what kind of fantasies do you have?" she asked him.

"Before this? Not many," he said and then stopped and shook his head, "That's a lie. Nothing specific. I never imagined bathtubs or kitchen counters or that thing you do with your tongue but I'd thought about it. Let's work through your fantasies first. I'll work mine out and we can come back and do it all over again."

"And again and again," she teased, her head coming up from his shoulder to whisper in his ear. He turned and caught her mouth with a kiss that tasted of wine and bubble bath.

 


	6. Phone Calls and Mornings

Jem woke up without feeling disoriented. He knew exactly where he was and who he was with and he had a moment of undiluted peace. Everything was soft and warm and still smelled vaguely of lemon from the bubble bath the night before. Tessa's breathing came soft and even beside him. It was a near perfect moment. A melodic trilling interrupted it. It came again and he felt the bed shift as Tessa got up to go and stop it.

"Make it go away," he muttered but he was still half asleep and didn't really care. Tessa climbed back in beside him, wrapping a blanket around her bare shoulders as she opened her bag and dug for the trilling thing.

A phone. Phones were small enough now to be carried in bags. He'd forgotten that until she put the little silver thing to her ear and said, "Hello?" a pause, "Magnus!" Her face broke into a smile and she pushed some buttons on the phone and put it down between them so that Jem could hear the conversation.

"How are you?" Magnus's voice was far away through the little speaker on the machine but clear. He spoke as though this were a loaded question. Tessa grinned wider.

"I'm fine, are you recovering? I was going to come by New York and visit you," she said.

"Oh, Tess," Magnus's voice changed immediately, deeply sad. Jem hadn't seen Magnus before he left Alicante but he must have heard what happened. He thought that she was deflecting the conversation, covering up some heart ache. Jem was shocked out of his contented mood by that thought.

It seemed to him an impossibility to not have gone to meet her or to have abandoned her after he had. What would it have been like for her if he hadn't shown up that day? He tried to imagine what it would have felt like to have arrived on that bridge and not found her. How long would he have waited? Days. Years maybe. No, he knew the true answer to that question. He would have spent his lifetime looking, waiting, searching for her.

There had been years where that single hour was the only one when he saw her. He’d been terrified that she wouldn’t show and that terror had pushed all the way through the glass of the Brotherhood. Terror that one year she’d just stop coming because he was just another reminder of a past too painful to face. Or worse, she wouldn’t come because something had happened to her. She would be injured and alone and there was no one left to go find her.

"No, really," she said, "I'm wonderful. Everything is perfect. How long have you known?"

"He's there?" Magnus said.

"Of course, he's here," she said reaching out to touch Jem's arm as though double checking that fact.

"I have known for approximately ten minutes because these idiots don't know what the important parts of a story are. 'Oh, yeah, he's human again, said he has an appointment in January, forgot to mention it,'" Magnus's voice was slightly mocking and someone on the far end of the phone line made a protesting noise.

"There was a lot of other things going on," Tessa said always placating an argument, even one she wasn't involved in.

"So," he drawled, "How's the sex?"

A voice in the background on Magnus's side said something that might have been, "Brother Zachariah's having sex?"

Jem made a sputtering noise and Tessa blushed but she also laughed and said, "Mind blowing." Jem gave her an incredulous look. It was a very modern phrase and although he didn't particularly disagree with the sentiment, that she'd said it, aloud, to someone else was shocking. She clapped a hand over her mouth as though trying to push the phrase back inside. She hadn't intended to say it out loud. She bit her lip and winced a little.

"Details?" Magnus asked and there was amusement in his voice as though it were the grandest joke.

"Not for you," Tessa told him.

"Let me guess, careful and gentle, very sweet," Magnus said.

"Shut up Magnus," Tessa said. "Tell me you haven't been considering what Jem is like in bed."

"Not seriously, just now really," Magnus said. "I'm right, aren't I?"

"Not particularly," Tessa said. "Good bye Magnus." And then she hung up on him.

"You did not say that to him," Jem said.

"No, of course I didn't," Tessa said rolling back into his arms giddy and happy. It was the first time they'd told anyone that they were together. Having someone else know that they'd found each other made it real. It couldn't be a dream if other people were involved. The way an engagement wasn't official until it had been announced. Jem considered the newspaper ads in the society pages in a world gone by.

"Shall we tell everyone? Take out a newspaper announcement?" he said into her ear. "James Carstairs and Theresa Gray would like to announce to their family and friends that they are having mind blowing but not so gentle sex in a hotel in York." She laughed hard and she was close enough that it reverberated through him too.

The phone chirruped again. Jem had rolled on to his back and she lay against his chest, legs straddling his hips. Her face twisted into a grimace but she reached for the phone anyways. It was a text message. Jem considered destroying the little machine but didn’t think that she would appreciate it.

"He's sending us a gift," Tessa said turning the screen so he could see. She hadn't gotten off of him.

"That sounds mildly terrifying," Jem said.

"It'll be at the London flat by the time we get back," she said.

"That's very nice, we'll have to send him a thank you card," Jem said and then took the phone out of her hand and turned it over until he found a button that would turn it off and then he threw it at the sofa. It bounced off the cushions and hit the floor but neither of them got up to see if it had broken.

Jem’s hands found her thighs and ran down to her knees then back up. She bent over him, hair falling in a curtain around them and kissed him in a way that was gentle and careful. He kissed her back in a way that wasn’t. Her gentleness was insistent and he could refuse her nothing. If she’d asked him to leap off of a bridge, he would have done it without question. To lay back and let her be gentle was a much easier request to honour. 

She kissed his lips and his eyelids. She kissed the runes on his cheeks and under her lips they seemed a little less like a threat that he would have to return to the dark. Kisses on his cheeks and his neck. Up in that hollow by his ears and down in the space between his collar bones. His hands played idly over her thighs while she kissed his temples and his forehead and ran her fingers through his hair. He smiled and relaxed and let her do as she pleased. When she’d kissed a line out to his shoulder and then back to his mouth again, he opened sleepy eyes to look at her.

“Careful and gentle is nice,” he said softly.

“Mmmm,” she said and kissed him with more insistence than before.

His hand on her knee slid to the inside of her thigh and then higher until he could interrupt her gentle kiss by making her gasp. She twisted against his hand but didn’t break away from his mouth. He gathered her and rolled her onto her back and was surprised to find that she pushed against him and kept rolling until she was on top again. They’d rolled all the way across the giant bed but hadn’t run out of space though they had rucked the blankets up into a twisted mess that held them together.

“I can’t take it like that again,” she whispered into his ear. He started to apologize and she shook her head, hair brushing against him, “I would do it again if I could handle it. It was incredible. But right now, careful and gentle really is necessary.”

Careful and gentle took much longer than anything else they’d done. She wasn’t teasing, she was just slow and seemed to be everywhere around him. Her feet against his legs as she reset her knees. Her hands on his face, his chest, his hands. Fingers laced together. Hair in his face, in his hands, spread out around them. The alchemy of touch that was her stomach coming into contact with his and then way again as she moved. He was stunningly aware of every inch of her.

It took self control to let her do what she wanted. He had to gather himself together and resist the urge to push up harder when she slid down. Her face was inches from his. Kiss after kiss. Gentle and not so gentle. Taste and sensation. His lips on her neck and her mouth and her ear which hadn’t been intentional but she’d bowed her head at the same moment he leaned up. He took her face in hand and turned it to kiss the other ear which made her laugh softly. Everything about her like this seemed soft. She had become an ethereal creature, too beautiful to be quite real.

The climax snuck up on him again. She had her hands interlaced with his. He tightened his fingers around hers and it was the only warning either of them got before his head fell back and he was gasping out her name. She held his hands as she rolled away from him a moment later.

“That was perfect,” she said and then, almost a plea, “Nothing more.”

“You’re too far away,” he said pulling her back so their bodies were touching again. He honoured the request and didn’t touch her anywhere but her arms and her back as she tucked her head back into that space on his shoulder that he hadn’t known had been designed specifically for the purpose.

“I’ve hurt you,” he said.

“You’ve worn me out,” she said. “They're not the same thing.”

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“I think have bruises most of the way down my legs from that thing in the bath,” she said and his stomach turned but she kept talking, “I wouldn’t give them up though. It was amazing.”

“We might need a small break?” he said and it came out like a question. He had given up worrying that he would hurt her and had stepped over some line he couldn’t make sense of. He’d been so careful to make sure that she wasn’t hurting.

“Very small,” she said. “James, please stop looking at me like that.”

“Like what?” he asked.

“Like I’m going to break,” she said. “I promised you that you wouldn’t hurt me and you haven’t. It’s nothing worse than training room bruises, muscles that I haven’t used in a long time getting stretched out. I’m sore but I’m not hurt. I will never forgive you if you show me what that could be like and then start treating me like glass.”

“You enjoyed it?” he said lifting his head to kiss her forehead which conveniently made it impossible for her to see the concern on his face.

“Didn’t you?” she said.

“Yes,” he said. 

“I enjoyed it,” she said. “I’ve enjoyed every minute of having you here. Since that first kiss on the bridge, I have enjoyed absolutely everything. I can’t remember the last time I was happy like this, Jem. It’s been a very long time.”

He gathered her a little closer. The last happiest day for him was even farther away than hers. He wasn’t sure he’d ever felt this kind of utter contentment. Maybe as a child but that wasn’t the same. A child was happy because their world was small and safe. He knew how big and awful the universe could be and to be happy in spite of that was something altogether different.

And he was.

Happy.

It was bright and brilliant and undeniable. The little word didn’t seem big enough to encompass the entire feeling but every synonym he knew lacked the simplicity of it. She was warm and close and he could feel her smile against his skin. There was no where either of them needed to be.

He was happy. 


	7. Traffic and Airports

They hadn't gone back to London. On the drive back into the city center, trapped in a snarl of London traffic, Tessa had turned to him with an invitation in her eyes. It wasn't sex but the look wasn't far off from the way she looked at him when she suggested something that involved taking their clothing off. A little challenging, a little mischievous.

"The car rental has a drop off point at Heathrow," she said.

"That's miles from your apartment," he said.

"And yet, very close to the airplanes," she said.

"You want to go to Thailand right now?" he asked.

"Not necessarily. I want to go see what they've got on offer," she said. "Last minute seats are often sold very cheap. If you didn't care where you ended up you could go anywhere. We'll need to forge you a passport but that isn't hard."

"You want to go and get on a plane?" he asked.

"Any plane," she had been looking at him with her head tilted back against the headrest but the traffic was moving again and she turned her attention back to the road. "We'll need to take the next exit. You've got about three hours to decide if the cars keep on at this pace."

"Let's go. Anywhere and everywhere," he said grinning as the exasperation climbed into her voice. He waited until they stopped again and then grabbed a fistful of her sweater and pulled her towards him and kissed her temple. She laughed and he released her as the brake lights let up again and the traffic crawled forward.

His world had been so small for so long and suddenly everything he'd never seen was laid out at his feet. They could go anywhere. Anywhere. They could see cities that he had been to countless times but had never truly seen. They could go sit in the middle of the rain forest if they wanted to. They could eat food they'd never seen and learn how to ask for directions in languages they didn't speak. Anywhere and everywhere was a very big place.

"Will you come back to Shanghai with me?" he asked.

"I will but it's different," she said.

"I know," he said. "I want to go to LA as well, before we go too far."

"I've got a house there," she said. "I got it back in the 80s before the Circle but until the uprising it was where I spent most of my time. The Blackthorns have those two half-faerie children and I didn't want them to have no one there to help if the Circle decided to come after them. They never made it that far across the continent but I worried for a long time."

"You heard what happened?" he asked.

Her fingers tightened on the steering wheel as they inched forward again. She nodded but didn't say anything else. She wasn't close to many of her descendants but Jem knew she could draw the entire family tree without missing a single distant great-great-great anything. He suspected she could do most of the Fairchild and Lightwood family trees as well. He knew that he could.

"Have you met Jace yet?" he asked. They'd talked through the story, what he knew, what she did. She'd fought at Brocelind but hadn't known all the details that had happened behind the scenes. Jem knew most of it.

"Magnus tried to introduce him in Alicante after the war with Valentine was finally done. He looks so much like his father," she said and her voice wasn't happy.

"He's a hundred times the man his father was," Jem said. "You should meet him. He'll do the Herondale name proud. He already has."

"I thought he was a Lightwood," she said with a little smile that told Jem that she had paid much more attention to Jace than she was letting on.

Most of the younger members of her family had never met her. Even so, sometimes after being told by a librarian in Alicante that the book they were looking for was impossible to find, it would show up on their doorstep without a note. Others had found that their over mortgaged house had been paid off by an unnamed investor. He'd once heard one of the Blackthorns say that they'd been accepted to a difficult training program because of the excellent recommendation they'd received though they had no idea who might be recommending them. She kept her ears open and paid attention to the details.

"He can be both," Jem said. "They're his family." He left unspoken the "but so are we," he wanted to add to that. Tessa smiled at him again and he hoped that it was because she understood it. 

 

* * *

 

Tessa stopped at a bank before they got to the airport and they rented a safety deposit box that they could leave the box of Will's things in without worrying about them. The banker had responded to the name Tessa Herondale with such an excessive display of politeness that Jem wanted to lean over and look at the screen to see how much money she actually had. Even with their jeans and his scarred face, they were treated the way a clerk might have treated a gentleman when the world had been younger. It was surprisingly unmodern.

Jem considered the violin. He held the case in both hands as he had when he'd carried it from Shanghai to Alicante and then from Alicante to London. He didn't want to leave it in the sterile little metal box.

Irrationally, he didn't want to leave it alone. It was made of wood but if something was yours long enough it started to absorb just a little bit of your soul. Didn't Tessa's magic prove that? The violin wasn't just a thing. The banker had left them alone with the box to pack it. They stood in an empty room and she stood beside him and waited for him to come to a decision.

"I haven't even played it yet," he said.

"We don't need to leave today. We can take it to a restorer and get it reoiled and strung and whatever else it needs. You can bring it with you. We can go to Vienna and or Italy and get it done by a grand master of some sort," she said.

"We'll come back for it," he said. "Before Thailand. We'll go wherever the airplane will take us and see everything we can and we'll come back for it."

 

* * *

 

In the airport, Jem found himself reaching for senses he didn't have anymore. It was easier to be in a crowd as a Silent Brother because he had never been a part of it. Even a gathering of Silent Brothers was not truly a crowd. Each was distinct and unconnected. Tessa had left him with the passport she'd conjured up for him and their tiny amount of luggage to go and negotiate with the person at the ticket counter.

The airport was substantially more complex than anything he could remember about ports or train stations. He'd traveled as a Brother for so long. He hadn't needed tickets or schedules or security checks. He had just gone where he was told.

Tessa was not just buying the ticket but choosing the location. He would go where he was told this time with none of the lingering annoyance of being just a cog in a machine. It had always been there, in the back of his so-strange Silent Brother mind that he had no choices. He'd made the choice that erased all others. The part of him who had never stopped being James Carstairs had also never really accepted that.

"Let's have cake before we get on the plane," he said pointing out a little bake shop when Tessa came back with papers in hand.

She gave him a bemused look, "Any reason?"

"Because there's no one to tell us not to," he said.

Tessa had glamoured their way through security claiming that it he did not really want the entire airport experience. Then, over cake - hers was lemon and his chocolate - she showed him the ticket and explained what the codes meant. They were going to Nice in the south of France. A short flight, they'd be there before dinner.

"Travel is so much waiting," he said later as they stood in a line with their documents in hand. He leaned his cheek against her hair then immediately pulled back. They were in a line. They were surrounded by people and he'd managed to forget it.

She put her arm through his and cuddled against him, "Anybody says anything, I'll curse them."

He put his cheek back against her hair, "You've never laid a curse in your life."

"True, but I'd do it for you," she said.

She stayed close until they got to the gate and eventually through to their seats. She pushed him into the little pair of seats first so he was sitting against the window. It was a small plane. He knew that but he'd never seen the interior of any plane so he wasn't sure what a big one would look like.

He'd been expecting it to be grander. It was a flying machine after all. Shouldn’t that be impressive? But it was remarkably like the public compartments on a train. The seats weren't particularly comfortable and they seemed to have been designed with someone much shorter than he was in mind. The little window showed tarmac and little vehicles tugging carts to and fro.

"Impressed yet?" she asked.

"Not really, no," he said returning her teasing smile.

Take off was impressive.

It pushed him back against the seat. Tessa took his hand while they both pretended he wasn't fighting down some instinctual fear that ran deeper than the logic that told him people did this daily and survived. Once the plane was in the air, level and traveling at a consistent speed his fear started to morph into something almost gleeful.

"How high are we?" he asked her.

"I have no idea," she admitted, "I think the captain told us during that garbled message about seat belts."

He looked down at clouds and had a moment of vertigo before it swept away by wonder. Tessa leaned close enough that her shoulder was pressed to his and their hands were still joined. She was watching him, not the window. The sky had been gray and overcast when they'd boarded but from above it was all blue and a spun sugar white.

"Tell me you have not gotten used to this," he said as the clouds broke and they could see countryside laid out below them like an uneven patchwork quilt. She shook her head and he only glanced at her a moment before he went back to watching the world below them. Even when it got monotonous and he had no idea which country they were passing over, he didn't look away. He asked Tessa questions about air travel and where she'd been and how she chose whether to fly or to use a portal and she answered him in a soft voice, still leaning close. The plane wasn't private or intimate but it felt like it in that moment.

When they crossed the Alps, he had another moment of dizzying vertigo. The mountains spread out like a jagged carpet. They were tall enough that people could spend days walking up them, big enough that people could get lost and die on those peaks. They looked like toys from the plane's window. He relinked his fingers with Tessa's but didn't look away. He watched mountains roll by below until they disappeared below clouds again.

"We're very small. People, I mean. We're very small," he whispered to her in Mandarin before the plane began its descent.

"We're not really, the world is big but we contain as much inside us as there is around us," she told him.

 

* * *

 

He came up behind her and looped his arms around her. Another hotel room. He was starting to conjure of fantasies of a place that was theirs. A home, not just a bed and a table. He wanted to choose wallpaper and help her put up bookshelves and have a wall full of photos of people they loved. He’d seen a photo collection that covered an entire hallway once when he’d gone to see an elderly lady on her death bed. He’d walked below the smiling faces of her family as he came to give her the last rites of the Nephilim before her family said their good byes. He wanted a collection like that.

She cuddled back against his chest and he breathed in the smell of her hair. He had lived for more than a century without her and in only a little more than a week she had become essential. There was no where else he wanted to be. No where else he could even imagine being. Everything narrowed down to her.

"I'm sorry for my behaviour in the station," he said and then corrected, "airport."

"Are you alright?" she asked. "I've never seen you react like that."

"I'm still not very good at having all my emotions," he said. Her hands where over his and he opened his fingers to allow hers to lace them together. He spoke into her neck, trying to keep another overreaction at bay. He was ashamed and he didn't want that feeling to take him over either. "As a Silent Brother they were distant. I didn't have to learn to control my anger or," he nuzzled her neck, "manage lustful thoughts," she laughed. It worked that feeling pushing its way up through all the others to take up residence in his thoughts. He didn’t want to be angry or ashamed or sad. He wanted to lose himself in loving her.

"And you've forgotten how," she said.

"I can manage the little ones," he said. "I can manage inconveniences and most of my worries. Usually. Sometimes my worries get the better of me. Sometimes I wait days to do what I should have the first time I saw you."

She squeezed his hands a little tighter but didn't interrupt him. She was filling up all the empty spaces. The spaces in his heart and his head where the emotions would rattle around until they became hurricanes of anger or fear. It was so much better to fill them with love.

"I love you," he said, "I love you and I have missed you for so long. I've worried about you Tessa. Each time news of a terrible story filtered its way down to the Silent City I imagined something like that happening to you with no one to protect you. Shush," he said before she could interrupt him, "I know very well that you can take care of yourself. My anxieties didn't care. After Will," he waited a moment but the grief just tugged at the edges it didn't pull him under, "After Will was gone," it tugged harder but he kept speaking, "I worried about you. When that man in the airport touched you it all came back. My reasoning couldn't get out ahead of the emotions. I'm sorry."

"You have nothing to apologize for," she said.

"I came rather close to breaking his arm," Jem said.

"If you hadn't have been there, I probably would have broken his fingers pulling them off of me. I might have broken his jaw if he'd gotten any closer," she said. "He doesn't know it it but he's actually very lucky."

Jem laughed and the last of the shame evaporated. The grief was still there, tugging at his heart but it always was. Tessa leaned her head back against his shoulder and looked at him.

"It's wonderful to have you there to protect me," she said.

"Even if you don't need it?" he asked.

"Especially because I don't need it. People protect the defenseless out of honour. You don't need to protect me, you do it because you care," she said. "I'd do the same for you, if you ever needed it."

"You protect me from all the things that I can’t fight. I think that matters even more," he said.

Her head on his shoulder was facing the wrong way to kiss so he pressed his lips to her cheek and then moved down her neck.

"Are we still taking a break?" he asked.

"I've had enough of taking a break," she said and arched her back. Her head stayed in place on his shoulder as he pushed her shirt away to kiss along her collarbone. The only other point of contact was much lower. She swung her lower body and rubbed across him. He reached down and grabbed her hips more out of self preservation than anything else. His emotions were already raw from being dragged out and rattled about. The desire took him like a strong current.

He leaned into her, holding her hips still and tight against him. He couldn't hold her immobile without hurting her and when he stopped her from rubbing she did something else that he could feel but not identify. It was a small little movement, almost struggling but more intentional than that. He pressed tighter and she lost her balance. She threw up a hand to catch herself against the wall so he didn't push her over.

"Do that again," he said.

"Are you going to throw me to the floor if I do?" her voice was breathy but there was laughter in it.

He readjusted his feet and then hers, kicking them a little wider so she was better braced.

"No," he said. She laughed very softly and put both hands up against the wall. He wasn't just holding now, his hands were rubbing circles into her hips and then lower to her thighs then up to her stomach. She was still moving with him but he'd taken some of the control back. He wasn't the only one drowning in desires.

"This is my favourite part," he said.

"Pinning me to a wall?" she asked. His hands had wandered far enough that she was back to rubbing her bottom over him in the most distracting way imaginable.

"Perhaps, haven't decided on that yet," he said. "I meant the part where you want this just as much as I do."

"Oh, that," she said but whatever she was going to say next was lost in a gasp. He pulled her shirt off and brought both hands up to see if he could make her gasp louder. Her hips stopped twisting but pushed back against him as he rolled her nipples between his fingers and pulled a cry out of her.

"I want to try it like this," she said when his hands had slipped lower again. "With you behind me."

"You can do it like this?" he asked looking down the line of her bare back to where their still clothed bodies met.

"I've never done it but I've heard that you can," she said. "I have a friend who claims ‘from behind’ is the best way to do it."

"You've never tested that?" he asked. "It sounds like a statement that requires testing."

She spun around, suddenly and he stumbled into her. She wrapped her arms around his neck and her face was serious and very close to his.

"I don't test these things, just to test them," she said. "I've taken two people to bed in my entire life, you and Will. Never anyone else." He nodded unsure of what to say. Her serious look vanished and she smirked, "And Will wouldn't have done it like that."

"No?" Jem asked he'd backed her into the wall and didn't remember doing it. She was pinned between the neutral hotel wallpaper and his body.

She frowned a question at him and he found that he really did want to know. Maybe it was the grief still tugging at his heart, any news of Will was news worth having or maybe it was genuine curiosity. He nodded at her because either way, he wanted to know.

"The first time with Will, was the first time," she said adjusting her arms around his neck. "And it hurt because the first time - at least when no one knows what they're doing and we really didn't - the first time hurts."

"And that would have bothered him immensely," Jem said.

"Even though it wasn't anything he’d done wrong. It wasn’t his fault. After that, he liked to be able to see my face and I think it was because he was worried that he was going to hurt me again and wanted to be able to make sure that it didn't happen," she said.

"He's gentle," Jem said.

"He's careful," she corrected with a little smile. Neither of them even noticed that they talked of Will in the present tense. He’d been gone for most of century but that didn’t matter when it was just the two of them.

"And I'm not," he said.

"Not so much, no," she said. "If you'd told me before that I would like it this much to have you pin me up against counter tops and bathtubs until I can barely breathe I don't think I would have believed you. It still surprises me."

"Shall I pin you up against this wall?" he asked taking a hand off of the bare skin of her back to knock on it.

"I think I'd like to be taken to bed," she said.

"I can do that for you," he said and he stepped back and scooped her up like a princess in a fairy tale. She cuddled into him. By the time they reached the bed he was so distracted by her nibbling at his neck that he didn't so much lay her down gently as collapse with her.

Her mouth was on his and her hands were up under his shirt pushing it up, up and off. They were going to find clothing strewn everywhere again. He laughed at the thought but it was swallowed up by her. He explored her mouth and she opened to him. Her tongue against his made him groan. She matched his intensity and pushed it higher. One day they'd cross some line and truly catch fire.

Her eyes were unfocused when he pulled back but she found his face with her fingers and outlined the shape of his mouth with little glancing touches that he felt in places that were no where near his mouth. Then she was pulling at his jeans and he was smiling as he undid hers. Once the last of the clothing was gone he pulled the duvet up around them and pushed her down, his entire body against hers. A little nest. A barrier of fabric between them and the entire world.

She was all he could see that wasn't white bedspread. Her eyes were bluer than usual against the sea of white sheets. They stilled before they began anything and her smile said that she was taking the moment to just enjoy the view as much as he was.

"You were worth the wait," she told him.

"Yes," he agreed. "So are you."

Then the conversation was lost in a kiss. They could have kept going just like that but the desire to do things that she'd never had before was too strong. He lifted her and flipped her onto her stomach. There was a line, he was discovering, where she was so aroused that she would do anything he wanted. It terrified him a little bit. She was past that line now. He could have asked her for anything and received it.

"Why do you trust me so much?" he asked her.

"I am safer with you than anyone," she said, her voice slightly muffled by the pillow.

"Do you want me to do this?" he asked looking down at her laid out below him. He knelt between her spread thighs and had no idea where to go next.

"Yes, James," she said and she pushed herself up so she was no longer lying on the bed but raised. She had braced her knees and her elbows so that she was up off the mattress which made the whole idea seem more plausible. She shifted with him, her whole body reacting each time his thighs brushed the back of her legs. She couldn't see what he was doing and the anticipation was written over every line of her body. He found a position that would work. His knees in the right place, her hips in the right place but he stopped there.

She shifted her hips in a sort of silent plea but he was busy running his hands up from her spread knees to her hips and up the slopes and planes of her back. There were scars there. He ran his hands over them. Old, old scars. He leaned over her and pushed her hair over her should so he could kiss the back of her neck.

"Jem?" she said and he kissed a line across her shoulder before drawing back. This position made her vulnerable. She kept willingly giving him so much control over her. He finally got his nerve up to take what she was offering him. He slid into her easily and deeply and then just a little farther than he thought he could. She made an involuntary noise and wrapped her arms around the pillow in front of her. He ran a hand down the line of her back from her hip to where her shoulders were pressed into the bed. She tilted her hips in an invitation that he took without it needing to be offered twice.

It took a few attempts before he'd learned what she liked he started to pull back and take her thrust by thrust, working to find the right angle to make her moan or make those little gasping cries. He leaned over her, bracing a hand above her should so he could use the other to find that place between her thighs. She reached her release long before he was even close. She twisted and shuddered around him and he ran his hands over her, leaned down to kiss her, to whisper in her ear as it came to an end with him still buried inside her.

"Do you want to stop?" he asked.

"No," she said.

"Good. I don't want to stop, either. Lift your hips up higher," he said and he pulled her up to where he wanted her. Her thighs shuddered and he gathered up every inch of self control to stay still and do nothing more then smooth his hands over those muscles until she had regained her breathing.

"This isn't going to be gentle," he said. It was half request, half warning. His self control was about to come apart. He couldn't do gentle but he could stop if she wanted it.

"I don't want gentle," she said and though her body had calmed, her voice as still shaky. She tilted her hips and then pushed herself back against him so that he was pressed all the way into her body. That was more than enough invitation. He took her hips and found a rhythm made both their bodies jolt when they came together. It was rougher than he'd expected it to be. His body had taken control but every noise she made was an invitation.

"Oh yes," she said when he took her her hips and held her back against him as tightly as he could. He held her just to savour the sensation and the way she looked below him with her head down and her hair spread across the pillow as her ragged breathing made her chest heave.

He started moving faster and his fingers found that spot to bring her to a second orgasm. He didn't wait for her to calm this time. She nearly collapsed below him. Her stomach was against the mattress but her knees were spread wide and she kept her hips tilted towards him. When the release hit him he had his hands braced on either side of her where she lay below him. Later he would worry that leaning all his weight into her as he came would be painful. In the moment he did it without thinking. His body shuddered and he half fell down beside her.

She looked at him with hooded eyes and ran her hand down the side of his face. She was still flushed and couldn't stop smiling. He kissed her very gently and could feel the smile as she kissed back just as softly.

"I liked that," he told her.

"Me too," she said.

“We should go do something French since we came all this way,” he said.

She leaned in and kissed him deeply again, “They call kissing with tongue French,” she said.

“I was thinking baguettes and fancy wine,” he said, “But this French kissing may need to be explored more thoroughly first.”

She giggled and ran her tongue along his lower lip. The storm of emotions that had nearly pushed him over into the shaking mess he’d been after the battle in Alicante had receded before the force of her. She was home and safety and family. He kissed her and tucked the blankets around them and let himself forget where in the world they were at all.  


	8. Something French

Tessa was beautiful. Jem had always thought so. Even before he had looked at her and seen home, she had been beautiful. It wasn’t any one detail. Poets liked to wax on about a girl’s eyes or her hair but it wasn’t the details that made Tessa worth staring at, it was all the light that shone out from somewhere underneath all that.

Other people saw it too. He’d awoken to a century that defined beauty differently than he had as a boy and even still she was beautiful. People noticed her. He caught them looking back at her when she went by. It brought out a possessiveness that he hadn’t known he was capable of.

Then she turned around and smile at him and it would all vanish. She didn’t look back at the man who watched her skirt brush over her legs, no, she looked at him. His memory called up the way she’d said, “My Jem,” and it didn’t matter that other people were looking. It also made it very difficult to think about the matters at hand as remember that moment brought back memories of all the moments that had come before and all the moments that had come after.

In the center of the town where it was all old cobbles and wrought iron balconies, she’d found a carriage ride. It was all touristy chintz but Jem found himself charmed by it. She sat far closer than they would have if they’d been on a carriage ride through London when they’d been engaged. Her skirt left her bare from mid thigh to sandals and she wore an insubstantial cardigan over the thin flowy fabric of her shirt. She sat huddled close to him and away from the brisk breeze.

“I thought it would be warmer,” she admitted to him as the horse and driver drew them down toward the sea.

“It is January,” he said.

“It is the south of France. The south of anywhere is supposed to be warm,” she said.

He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her a little closer and she cuddled into him. Every time she fit herself to him like that he was surprised to learn that his body had been designed for this. Her head had a space against his shoulder that was a perfect fit.

“Better?” he asked.

“Yes, still cold but always better like this,” she said.

He had thought he might have the illusion of being back in London but even closing his eyes didn’t block out the sound of traffic or the smells of a modern city which were so much more metallic and chemical than the filth of London had been. It was all much cleaner and much different. The horse’s hooves clopped along. The driver had offered to give them the tour but instead they’d opted to whisper together in Mandarin and pretend they were alone.

He’d kissed her in a carriage once and he did it again now.

“Let’s skip lunch,” he said into her lips. The open air carriage was not nearly private enough for him to even be thinking the thoughts that ran through his head.

“I thought you were hungry. Baguettes and fancy wine were the request if I remember correctly,” she said.

“I want to do other things with my mouth,” he said before he’d thought it through. They were the only people within earshot who understood Chinese well enough to know what he had said but he blushed and she muffled her laugh against his chest.

“Not a joke,” he said trying for gravity and missing.

“I love you,” she said still laughing. It sounded different when it was said through a laugh. This wasn’t a declaration, it was a fact. He wondered how many ways you could say three words and how they could be so different each time.

“I love you too,” he said.

A very long time ago, in a past that still held sway over him even if it was foggy and indistinct sometimes, his mother and father had been like that. The declarative moments were not something a child saw but the laughing and the little touches like this had been there. Even through the morals and the etiquette of the day he had been able to see these moments. They had shaped his understanding of what love was.

Love wasn’t just proposals and grand sacrifices. It was also her fingers between his. It was his mother correcting his father’s pronunciation with that little fond smile. It was that time that Will had handed Tessa a cup of tea with extra sugar in it because he had known she was upset. It hadn’t been a ceremony. Just a cup of tea. Love was the everyday. Love was little laughing moments. Love was this.

He pulled her in a little closer but didn’t try to explain it. He didn’t need to. The carriage released them back where they’d started though Jem wasn’t sure what they had been intended to see during the tour. He didn’t really care.

Tessa took him to a cafe and the smirk she gave him while she ordered in surprisingly fluent French told him that she knew he didn’t really want the wine nor the plate of fruit and cheese that arrived with it. She kept the conversation light and useless as they ate. Every once in awhile he caught a glint in her eye or a tilt to her smile that set his senses on edge. He was being played with but he didn’t understand how or why.

She was telling him an entirely dull story about visiting Paris with Ragnor Fell in the 1920s to be introduced to the warlocks of France when her foot found his calf. There was a tiny flash of smile as her bare foot traced up under his pant leg. Whatever happened at that long ago meeting was lost to his distraction.

“There is nothing I want to do right now that can be done in view of other people,” he interrupted her in mid-sentence. Rather than being offended, she grinned.

“Don’t you want another glass?” she asked as her foot climbed his leg slowly.

“No,” he said.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“It involves much less clothing than we’ve got on now,” he murmured.

“I was thinking we could go see the beach,” she said.

“Is that what you want?” he asked.

There was a long silence while her foot played up and down his leg. She smiled and tapped her finger against her lip in mock consternation while he fought his body for control of his reactions. He did not want to be embarrassed but his body was moving faster than his mind was.

“No,” she admitted.

“Then go pay the man for all this food we haven’t eaten and come with me,” he said.

She was excruciatingly slow about the entire process. She chatted to the waitress, she asked about the vineyard, she got directions to a museum that Jem didn’t think they’d ever go to. All the while she kept brushing her fingers over his knuckles or her leg over his knee where they were hidden by the table cloth. There was nothing about her behavior that he knew how to deal with when they had an audience. He didn’t know how to answer her or stop her or encourage her while the waitress showed her the bottle the wine had come in.

In a moment where they were alone he leaned in and whispered with his lips against her ear, “Please?”

She tossed the check back on the table with the money tucked underneath and he gratefully took her hand when she extended it and let her pull him out the front door.

  


* * *

  


Back at the hotel, he turned her around and pushed her up against the door as soon as it was closed. Her breath escaped in a gasp and they stared at each other for a frozen moment. She was beautiful. She was beautiful flushed from the cold. She was beautiful when he ran his fingers through her hair and knocked it all askew. She was beautiful when she smiled a challenge at him.

Her hands found the waistband of his jeans and the brush of her fingers against his stomach nearly toppled the last of his ability to think at all. She held his gaze as she unbuttoned and then unzipped his pants. The moment stretched again before she dropped to her knees in the entrance to the room and gathered him into her hand then her mouth. He was half hard before she even made contact.

A groan escaped and he caught himself against the wall to try and regain his balance. Her mouth was warm and hot and even the accidental graze of her teeth was exhilarating. He was still soft enough that she could fit everything into her mouth but the feel of her nose against the lowest part of his stomach was the end of that.

His control was stripped out from under him as she tried anyways. The point where he hit the back of her throat came with a tightening of her fingers where they had come to rest on his thighs.

Her tongue ran up and down him, then her fingers, then her mouth again. She drew him in fast and sharp then turned gentle. He didn’t notice how close he was until he came hard. He pulled back before he was finished and it hit her cheek as well as her mouth. They were both breathing hard.

He dropped to his knees before her, prepared to apologize. Her lips were parted before she ran her tongue over them and swallowed. She was wide eyed but halfway to a smile. He couldn’t quite voice the apology he’d intended. He wiped the mess he’d left on her face off and she caught him by the wrist and licked that off his fingers.

“Tessa?” he said caught by a feeling that tightened his stomach in what might have been disgust or desire.

She didn’t answer, she kissed him instead. There was a saltiness, an almost bitter flavour in her mouth. He kissed her harder, forcing her mouth open. She met him with an even greater intensity. Warm fingers started pushing his clothing off as he struggled to pull them both to their feet.

By the time they’d made it to the bed, he had ripped her shirt. It hadn’t been intentional but it was made of a nearly sheer fabric and he had pulled too hard and it had come apart in his hands. She lay on her back below him now and he didn’t really care about the ruined clothing or anything that wasn’t a part of her.

He stopped and caught her face in his hands. He needed time and he needed to see her like this. The desire to memorize her and store the memories away wasn’t gone. The look in her eyes was something he wanted to make a part of himself. 

“If I asked you to marry me, what would you say?” he asked and was shocked to find that the words had fallen out of his mouth. If his hands hadn't been otherwise occupied by the swell of her breasts he might have actually clamped them over his mouth. 

“You know the answer to that,” she said. 

“I don’t. It’s been more than a century, Tessa,” he said suddenly terrified. He hadn't meant to say it. It was too fast. It was the wrong time.

“I meant it then and you need to know that my answer has never changed,” she said.

He nodded silently and let the relief wash through him until he could calm down again. 

“Are you asking?” she asked.

She was pinned below him wearing nothing but a pair of panties and the scraps of fabric that had once been her shirt. She wasn’t nearly as vulnerable looking as she should have been like that. He felt like the one that was all laid bare though he wore more than she did. Then the feeling in his chest had nothing to do with clothing. Her answer had never changed. 

“Not yet,” he said imagining how he could do it right. 

Her smile didn’t fade as he pushed her knees wider and rubbed her through the remaining clothing with his finger tips. She had started teasing him on the carriage ride and he had every intention of paying her back with interest. She had raised her hips and pushed against him before and he wanted that again. He wanted to unravel her self control. He wanted her to gasp out his name.

He was both bigger and stronger than her and he used it to keep her where he wanted her. He wanted to go slow. She tried to twist her hips and increase the intentionally gentle touches of his fingers. He held her knees wide and played with her with his finger tips until he had to gather her wrists in his hands and hold her flat on her back to keep her from finishing what he had started.

“Jem, please,” she managed to get out as she collapsed back against the mattress in a kind of defeat.

His knees where braced to hold hers apart and her wrists were held in his hands. She was pinned. It would have taken either magic or violence for her to free herself. She didn’t use either but he paused and caught her attention just to be sure.

“Don’t stop,” she told him once she understood what he was asking though he never used words.

He pushed her to the struggling, pleading edge of release twice more without crossing that line. Her body spoke a language he understood. It had taken him a few days but now he could feel it coming and stop it or encourage it. He stopped shy of her release over and over again. He wondered how much he could learn in a month or year or a lifetime.

She was incoherent with need and begging when he finally pushed her flat to her back and entered her. She wrapped her arms around him and held him close. The first time was hard and fast. The first orgasm took little more than that entrance. The second he drew out her and she screamed out his name.

Her breath came in pants as he pushed her onward. She touched him, hands on his back and his hips. Her mouth against his shoulder or his face or his mouth. He could see the change in her as the last of her ability to make good decisions fled before the pleasure. It was terrifying. She would have allowed him to do anything to her in that moment. He wasn’t much closer to coherent.

He was deep inside her when he caught her face in his hands and tilted her chin back. The look on her face was almost pain. If she hadn’t been pleading and encouraging he would have stopped then and there. She pulled him in closer and he let go of everything that wasn’t physical sensation. Her teeth grazed his shoulder and her fingers bit into his back. There was a trembling in her stomach that he could feel against his and she wouldn’t hold still.

She cried out again and the trembling had spread through her thighs and down her arms, he could feel it in her fingers. He would worry later that he had hurt her when he pushed her down that last time but in the moment he didn’t stop.

He broke away from her and she made a noise that was almost a whimper before it resolved into, “Jem?”

He rolled back in close and pulled her in. Damp skin and the heat of her made breathing difficult but she held on and he found he didn’t care as he played with her hair. Their breathing returned to normal slowly.

“Is it normal for ex-silent brothers to be sex fiends?” Tessa asked.

“Fiend?” he asked and she pulled his face down and kissed it gently.

“Fiend is an under utilized word,” she said.

“I don’t know that I want to be a fiend,” he said.

“Still, is it normal?” she asked.

“Most men who leave the brothers after the initiation period never recover at all,” he said.

“So not normal then,” she said tracing patterns on his chest that might have been runes but also could have just been an excuse to touch him like her foot which was back on his leg.

“No,” he said, “I’m rather abnormal I think.”

“Incredible and unique Mr. Carstairs, don’t you dare sell yourself short,” she told him still running her hands over his skin.

“And a fiend,” he said rolling his eyes which made her smile.

“That too,” she told him.

They were nose to nose. He kept thinking he’d found it, the one moment that couldn’t be improved upon and then there’d be another like this one. He wasn’t sure he had ever been so uncomplicatedly happy in his entire existence.

  



	9. The Beach

Jem looked out over the beach at the crowd and the water beyond. It was crystal clear and blue green. There was white sand, brightly coloured umbrellas, children shrieking and giggling, the coconut scent of sunscreen and somewhere nearby someone was cooking food. He tried to isolate the sounds of the water then the conversation nearby then the sound of music coming from somewhere not too far away. It was chaos. Brightly coloured chaos. He smiled at it all.

“I’ve never been to a beach,” he admitted.

“Never?” Tessa asked.

“I have been the edge of a body of water but I’ve never been to a beach,” he gestured at everyone around them to show what he meant. Tessa followed the wave of his hand and though the trip had been her idea she wrinkled her nose in distaste. It was adorable and Jem put his arm around her to pull her close so he could kiss the end of her nose.

“There are too many people here,” she said.

“There are always too many people,” Jem said. “We could take those chairs there, you could read whatever you have in that bag and I could lie in the sun and think about nothing. That would be a lie. I would lie in the sun and think about your legs in that dress.”

“You shouldn’t say such things to a lady,” she laughed. They walked along the beach path a little ahead of him and she spun around to look at him as she spoke. The dress she wore was a simple white cotton shift thrown over what he assumed was a swimming suit. The spin made the skirt flare and then fall tight against the small amount of her thighs that it covered.

“I will think pure and respectable thoughts then,” he said after a slow blink that almost cleared the other kind of thoughts.

“Good,” she said spinning around again and leading the way across the sand. She walked with a gait that made her hips swing. It took him a moment to realize that she was walking like that on purpose and not because of the sand beneath her bare feet.

He resolved to learn how to tease her back. He had no idea how to bother her in public the way that she could almost effortlessly do to him. No one would have picked up on the spin or the way her hips moved unless they were already watching her very closely. She knew that he was watching and she was taking full advantage of the fact.

She led the way down through the crowd and then along the surf. Jem wore sandals that did nothing but hurt his feet so he carried them as waves lapped up to their feet and then rolled away again. They’d left France behind and come to one of Thailand’s tourist trap beach paradises. They had a few days before she was due for her meeting and she had suggested this place the morning after they’d woken in another hotel in Bangkok. He wasn’t sure why.

Jem wandered out into the water until the waves lapped at his calves instead of his ankles and he caught Tessa watching him with a little smile on her face.

“Where are we going?” he asked. They were still at the edge of the water but they were stepping away from the crowd where the beach had been tailored for the swimmers and the sunbathers.

“It’s a secret,” she said reaching out to take his hand. He walked a little deeper in the water than she did and laced his fingers through hers. He pressed his feet into the wet sand with each step. He liked the way it felt on bare feet. He stopped and dug his toes in and he pulled Tessa to a stop too. She looked down at his feet as they disappeared into the sand.

“Tess, there are fish,” he said.

“It is the ocean,” she told him but not in a dismissive tone and she stayed just as perfectly still as he did as the tiny little minnows darted toward their feet and then away again. He watched them and their little patterns as they wove in and out of each other. They disappeared and reappeared as they swam for deeper water and then came back.

“We should go to a nature reserve,” she said. “We could see the lemurs or whatever the native wildlife is. I’d forgotten how much you liked animals.”

So had he and it felt a little like reclaiming a piece of who he had been. He had put food out for stray cats as a child in Shanghai and he’d continued to do it in London. The cat problem in Shanghai had made his father threaten to go get a mundane pistol and shoot them all. Jem had been horrified by the very idea and his mother had promised him that there was no possible way that Jonah would hurt his cats. After it had become a joke. His father would glare at them when they’d pop up in the streets and come rub their heads on Jem’s legs and he’d tell them that he would shoot them if they didn’t get away. They’d follow Jem and ignore Jonah and then go off to do whatever it was that cats did.

“I want a cat,” he said still looking at the fish. “Do you think the Lightwoods would mind if I took Church back?”

“They might be glad to see him go. I hear his temper is the same as it ever was. Did he know you? When you came as a Silent Brother, I mean,” Tessa asked. She didn’t seem bothered by the sudden shift in the topic of conversation. He wondered if perhaps her thoughts were following similar paths.

“He would watch me but never came close. I didn’t smell the same or look the same but he always came out to watch me. The first time I saw him in New York I thought I had gone mad,” he said.

“Come on, we’re almost there, we’ll find you more fish to watch when we arrive,” she said tugging on his hand.

There, it turned out, was a rock.

Tessa held up a finger when he frowned at it. She stepped back and studied the rock and the air around it and held up her fingers as though testing the wind. She moved around the rock which was plain grey stone dusted with sand and bits of seaweed thrown up by high tide. Jem watched what she was doing and he watched her legs beneath the too short dress and he eventually gave up on trying to figure out what she was doing.

“Ha!” she said a few moments later and Jem was perplexed. Nothing was different. He went over when she gestured and looked at the rock from the same angle as she did. If there was magic there, he couldn’t see it.

“Come on,” she said holding out her hand again. She pulled him up over the rock and back down to the other side. They were still on the beach and for a moment he was about to accuse her of pulling pranks on him then she turned and pulled him towards a little building with a wide veranda set well back from the water’s edge.

“What is this? How did you know it was here?” Jem asked.

“It’s one of Ragnor Fell’s hiding places. It was, anyway. He built it long before these beaches attracted all those people out there. It’ll still be here, hidden away for a long time,” Tessa said. “I can hear his voice telling me off for bringing a Shadowhunter here. He was always telling me off for something like a grumpy uncle.”

“The High Warlock of London is your grumpy uncle,” Jem said smiling. They had made it to the building now and Tessa had dropped her bag on the shady side of the veranda. The cottage did not look Thai. The cottage looked like it had been lifted out of Kent and dropped on the beach by accident.

“The High Warlock of Brooklyn still owes me a pizza from a bet we had in the 1980s. The woman who ran the London drug trade for more than a century sent me a Christmas card each year. The head of the warlock market in Nice will probably send us a box of sex toys when she finds out that I have a man in my life. And she will call you that. “Man in my life.” I know some unusual people, Ragnor was not the strangest of them,” she said.

“Sex toys,” Jem said but his imagination couldn’t quite sort out what that meant.

“That would be the phrase that you would get caught on, fiend,” she teased.

“They’re things that you play with while you have sex?” he said.

“I assume so. I have never used any but Marce claims that they’re a better gift than a toaster. I hear she gives vibrating things and handcuffs as wedding gifts,” Tessa blushed just a little as she said it.

“Handcuffs?” Jem said and Tessa gave him a brief considering look and blushed a little deeper. His imagination was able to call up an image to go with that and he couldn’t decide if he liked it or not.

“We’re going swimming before that look on your face becomes an actual suggestion,” she said.

“Wait,” he reached out and pulled her back against his chest. She had turned to walk toward the water and was facing away from him. He looped his arms around her waist and she leaned back into him. Her skin and her dress were warm from the sun and he forgot what he had wanted to say for a moment as he held her close. He looked out past her at the waves on the shore.

“Jem?” she asked as the silence stretched.

“I want to understand this sex toy thing,” he said once he’d come back from the moment he had gotten lost in.

“Fiend,” she whispered and he put his hand over her mouth. She struggled without pulling away from him and the image that his imagination had called up to go with handcuffs came back again. He admitted to himself that maybe, just maybe, he did like the image.

“I just don’t understand what else you would need. All the necessary parts are there,” he said into her ear once she was had fallen still. She laughed against his hand. “Are there catalogs? Do they come with instructions?”

Tessa shrugged but didn’t try to speak past his hand. He put his hands back on her waist and she stepped away from him. His hands followed her though he didn’t try to pull her back again.

“I don’t know how sex toys work. I know there are many kinds but I have no idea how you use any of them. We can find out later. Right now, I am going swimming,” she said and then she pulled the dress up over he head. The fabric slid up under his hands and then it was gone and his palms rested against the bare skin of her hips.

“That is not clothing,” he said when the dress was gone. She was still facing away from him. Her hair had been pulled up in a bun on the top of her head so the entire line of her nearly naked body was visible to him.

“No, this is a bikini. There were other people out on the beach wearing them. Did you really not notice?” she asked.

“I was watching you,” he admitted. He was still watching her. The scraps of fabric masquerading as a swimsuit covered nearly nothing. She owned lingerie that covered more than this did. It was decorated in sunset pinks and oranges and held together by strings. Her skin was pale and she still wore the necklace he had given her all those years ago. The colours were vibrant against the near white of her shoulders and stomach.

She took her jewelry off and carefully put it away in her bag and then stood up and looked at him again. He was staring. He had been staring for awhile now. He reached out and touched the fabric where it stretched across the very lowest part of her stomach. He played with the tie over her hip and then pulled on it. It was tighter than he’d thought and didn’t actually come apart in his hands though it looked like it would.

“What are you doing?” she asked stepping away from him and twisting her hip away from his hands.

“I am taking off your clothing,” he said. “Not that this is clothing.”

“This is new, I want to wear for at least a little while,” she said moving away from him and doing a little spin to show it off. It was tied on her back and behind her neck as well.

“Did you buy it for me?” he asked following her slowly as she backed out onto the sand.

“Well I certainly wouldn’t wear it in public,” she said.

“You did say everyone else does,” he said.

“I still have moments where I feel under dressed because I am not wearing a corset and I stopped wearing corsets as soon as they went out of fashion. This is naked and I won’t wear it where other people can see it. Everyone else can wear watermelons on their heads if they want but I won’t,” she said.

“You might look very good in a watermelon, you look very good in this but regardless I am going to take it off. Those little knots look uncomfortable,” he said smiling.

“They’re fine,” she said and she was farther away now. “You’re going to have to catch me if you want it off.”

“Catch you?” he asked but the statement made sense an instant later as she took off across the sand at a run. He was left staring after her.

He was faster than she was but he let her hit the water before he put on the extra speed and caught her. He grabbed her around the waist and swung her up out of the water as she laughed. They were only in up to their knees but they’d thrown enough water around in the running that his shirt was wet and there were drops of it on her face when he put her down and she looked up at him.

He went for the strings again and a wave that couldn’t possibly have been natural hit him in the face. This time he was expecting it when she pulled away from him and he caught her before she could go anywhere.

“Magic isn’t fair,” he said. She was now wet as well as warm from the sun. She settled close to him and he stopped trying to untie the knots for a moment.

“You’re faster than I am,” she told him, “I’m just leveling the playing field. Besides, I like you wet.”

He tried to glare at her but couldn’t manage it as she pushed wet hair away from his forehead with gentle fingers. He locked his arm around her back and held her tight. She was smiling at him as he finally managed to work the knots loose. There were no more surprise waves, just that little smile on her face.

The top slipped sideways when he pulled on the knot and he decided that was close enough to what he wanted. He pushed the fabric aside until her breasts were free so he could touch them. Her expression had gone from challenging and teasing to soft and patient. Water swirled around their feet and his hair was already starting to dry in the heat and the sunlight.

He leaned down and pulled her nipple into his mouth. She groaned and pushed against him. When he pulled away she looked at him like he was something amazing. She tugged on his shirt and he took it off and he threw it and the swim suit he had worn towards the beach but didn’t check to make sure they had gotten there. She undid the rest of the ties on the bathing suit and then that was gone as well. When she backed up this time, she wasn’t running, she was leading.

Naked and now waist deep in water Jem finally remembered all the people they’d walked by on their way out here and he looked up at the beach. It was empty. They might as well have been the only people in the entire world. Tessa followed his gaze.

“There’s no one here. We can’t cross out of it unless we go back to the entrance. If we go too far in one direction we’ll find ourselves back where we started. It looks huge but it isn’t,” she said.

Then she lay back in the water and floated in the water. Jem had received swimming lessons but they had been less about learning to swim as they had been about preventing drowning. They had also occurred more than a century before. He wasn’t sure he remembered any of it.

He ran his hands over her body as she floated with her eyes shut. She smiled as he explored. He ran his hand down the center of her stomach where it was out of the water and then reached below her to run a hand down her back. She touched him back sometimes but mostly she just floated and let him explore her body.

The waves were gentle but constant and she moved in them. He guided her through the water with his hands on her hips or her feet. Pushing her so she spun around slowly or pulling her in. She was graceful in the water, not a strong swimmer but comfortable in the way her body move the ocean in a way that he wasn’t.

She swam around him, her feet up off the ground and her body gloriously naked in the water. She wasn’t self conscious. He kept waiting for her to get nervous, to realize that they were outside and not so far away from other people but she seemed to either not notice or not care. Her confidence settled him each time the thought of all those people they had gone by crossed his mind.

She was horrified by the idea of going out into public in the bikini but she had no reservations about putting her foot against his chest and pushing away from him as every inch of her skin sparkled in sunlight. Her shoulders were paler than her arms. Her legs seemed longer beneath the waves.

“I don’t trust myself as much as you trust me,” he said watching her as she swam back towards him. He wasn’t sure she had put her foot down since she’d laid back and lifted her hips out of the water. She swirled around him, ethereal in the water. She stopped with her hands on his shoulders and rather than settle her feet to the sand below she wrapped her legs around his waist. The water supported much of her weight but he put his arms around her just to hold her a little closer.

“I trust you completely,” she told him. “Except with my clothing.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Because you tossed my new swimsuit into the ocean. I’m never getting it back. You owe me now,” she grinned at him.

“What would like in compensation?” he asked her.

“You’re most of the way there,” she said.

He understood what she meant immediately and he smiled, “You can call me a fiend all you want but you want these things just as much as I do.”

She adjusted herself in the water rather than answering him with words. In the process she reminded him that he was more than ready to offer her what she was asking for. She gave him a challenging look and watched the expression change as he entered her. Her mouth always fell open as he did and to see that expression in bright sunlight made him freeze and then pull her in tight to kiss.

Half swimming and half standing they couldn’t quite manage what either of them wanted. Tessa was already laughing when an unusually large wave knocked into them and left Jem sputtering and her swimming for shore.

He caught up to her before she reached the shore and grabbed her around the waist. He rolled her over and dropped her onto her back in the sand at the edge of the beach. She looked startled for a moment before he kissed her. She met the kiss with arms around his neck and teeth on his lip.

He looked up at the stretch of white sand that led to the cottage. Then he looked down at her and the water came up as the waves rolled in and dragged on escaped tendrils of her hair so they swirled around her face and shoulders. He kissed her again and this time when he slid inside her body her mouth fell open but she didn’t laugh or sputter.

The water was a distraction, a soft roar in the background, the taste of salt when he ran his tongue along her skin, the tug and rush as each wave rolled past them. Tessa held onto his neck and whispered happy little nothings into his ear. The grit of sand beneath his hand when he braced himself above her and the bit of seaweed that caught on her shoulder when he lifted her up out of the water were just part of the little things that tugged on his attention.

But it was Tessa and his attention couldn’t be diverted for long. She was warm and soft and the salt water made her skin sparkle as the sun reflected off the drops on her cheek. Her knee was up and her body moved with his. Unconsciously they had found a rhythm that matched the pattern of the waves. He pushed her down as the waves slid past them and she raised herself to meet him as the water came back in.

Her hair was tumbling down and it clung to his arms and spread out across the sand. He twisted it into his fingers and held her head still as he kissed her and lost the rhythm of the ocean in favour of something more desperate. She cried out against his mouth and twisted against the sand. He collapsed into her a moment later, surprised to find a wave rising to meet him and make him shake water out of his eyes.

“If beaches were like this more often, I’d like them more,” Tessa said.

“I’m going to believe for the rest of my life that this is what beaches are like, you’ll never convince me otherwise,” he said.

Holding together as they wandered naked and a little dazed up out of surf, they made their way back to the house. Strung up in the veranda was a rope hammock that Tessa tossed a blanket over and then rolled into. It was not intended as a place for two people but being rolled together in the center of it felt like a feature rather than a detriment.

Tessa was wet and her damp skin was held against his by the shape of the hammock. The sand was drying to grit on her shoulder and he brushed it away. They didn’t actually sleep. They swung in the ocean breeze and ran their hands over one another’s skin as the afternoon waned into evening and the sun started to set over the ocean and painted the world beyond them in pink and gold. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My favourite details in this whole thing are Jem's army of loyal cat followers from his childhood and that he managed to walk through a beach of mostly naked people and genuinely not notice because he was too busy watching Tessa.


	10. The Mall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's only been a year and half since this fic has had an update! 
> 
> Here have so borderline public sex.

It was a massive shopping center and almost comically modern. Jem liked it. Liked the expanses of white and the glass and the chrome. He liked the bright lights in the shops and the throngs of people. He kept a hand on Tessa as they wove through the crowd. She linked her fingers with his and every time she turned back and caught his eye, she smiled at him. They wandered through shops without buying anything. 

They were early, very early, for their meeting with Lijing in one of the restaurants and so they were exploring. Neither of them spoke Thai but each time Jem heard a snippet of Mandarin from somewhere in the crowd his childhood rushed up to meet him. He hadn't heard that language spoken by strangers in so long. It felt almost like a dream. They got by in English and the hand flapping language of tourists when they needed to but mostly they just melted into the crowd. Jem found himself enjoying the anonymity and her presence. She wore a simple sundress, it wrapped around her waist crossing over itself and then tying at her hip. 

"If I pull this string will your clothing fall off? It looks like it might," Jem said to her in a whisper as he rubbed one of the tails of the fabric between his fingers. 

"If you pull my clothing off in front of 200 people in a mall, I might never speak to you again," she whispered back.

"So that's a yes then," he said. 

She laughed, "I mean it." 

"How about if I pulled your clothing off somewhere else?" he asked. 

"We are in the middle of a mall, what did you have in mind, the toilets?" she asked. 

"No, absolutely not," he said. 

The conversation fell away as they kept going, wandering and looking at products Jem didn't care about enough to make sense of. In the back of a housewares shop, past towels and duvet covers, Jem found an open store room. He stuck his head in while Tessa was wandering through the kitchen section and then went to find her. 

"Can you enchant a door shut?" he asked. 

"Sure, unless it has some sort of defensive spell on it, why?" she said as she reached out to take his hand. 

If they were in the same space, she wanted to touch him. Her fingers found his or her shoulder bumped up against him or she leaned against him while they waited in a line. He squeezed her fingers and said a prayer of thanks to anything out there in the universe that might choose to listen to him. Her hand was warm and her skin was soft and with what he had in mind, that became utterly distracting. 

"There's a store room at the back that isn't locked," he said. 

"Jem," she said turning around to look at him with a smile on her face. 

"Not joking, but if someone could walk in, maybe it wouldn't be the best idea," Jem said. 

"You want to use their storage room for that?" she asked. 

"Yes," he said before his mind could catch up and remind him of how utterly improper that was. It was very nearly public. It was a place they didn't have permission to be. It was a place that wasn't intended for that kind of use. He blushed as those thoughts caught up but didn't rescind the offer. Tessa studied him and he almost laughed it off as a joke, almost pretended he hadn't meant it, didn't want it. 

"Ok," she said before he could start apologizing. 

"Ok?" he repeated. 

Then before either of them think through all the reasons against it, he grabbed her hand and pulled her back past the towels to the ajar door. She paused and a spell at the lock and then turned to look at him with her eyebrows raised. 

He kissed her. 

She looped her arms around his neck and kissed him back. They had started the day in each others arms. It hadn't been that long since they had been wrapped around each other like this but it still felt like finding the surface after drowning. He needed her if he was to keep surviving. Her hair was down so he could plunge his fingers into it without worrying about anyone being able to tell later. 

She pulled him in as enthusiastic as he was. They were pressed together with her back tight to the door they had just sealed and she kept arching into him. Her body strained against his and he pulled her closer. She struggled away first and backed into the room, exploring as he followed. His hands ran over her hips and up her back. 

He pulled her skirt up and ran his hands up her thighs to her hips as she peered at a shelf. She leaned back into him, bracing her hands on the shelf and pushing her hips back against his pelvis. He groaned and forgot how much stronger he was as he pushed back. The shelf rattled as she slammed into it. 

"Tessa, I'm so sorry," he said spinning her around. 

The shelf rattled again and he winced. 

"I'm fine, don't worry. I'm fine," she said. 

He held her face for a moment to be sure but she kept smiling and touching his cheek with a gentle palm. Once he was sure he hadn't hurt her, his attention started wandering. He'd pulled her dress just a little askew and could see the swell of her breast. He leaned down and pulled it out of her bra. She made a soft sound as he sucked on the skin there, pulling the nipple in past his teeth and sucking until she arched into him. He pulled harder as her head fell back then he did the other. She looked up at him with hazy eyes when he was done. 

The dress really was held together by just that one tie and once he'd undone the knot, it didn't take much to make it fall open. Her breasts had been pull up out of her bra, her skin was flushed and he could already see the dampness between her legs. He pulled her away from the shelf and towards an armchair still draped in plastic. He pushed her down into it. It caught her by surprise and she fell a little less gracefully than most of her movements. She laughed up at him and gave him a look. 

He pulled her knees wide and the plastic crinkled beneath her. She laughed again and he pulled her underwear to the side without bothering to take it off so he could lick her. She moaned as he sucked and her head fell back as she pushed her knees wider for him. He was probably going to fast. She was already wet and each time she shifted below his assault, the plastic crinkled and reminded him that they weren't supposed to be here, doing this.

He paused a moment to see if that realization would bring with it any embarrassment. 

It didn't. Everything was her and she washed away any nervousness or recollection of proper morals that he had. 

He sucked harder and lapped at her until she was twisting and he had to hold onto her hips to keep going. The spell probably would soundproof the room and he wanted her to cry out. Here, where they shouldn’t be, he wanted to make her yell.  She kept biting it back so he'd lick harder and faster until finally it crested in a way she couldn't fight and she did let out that cry. He pulled it from her again. 

"Can we keep going?" he asked her once she'd caught her breath and could look at him clearly. 

"Yes, yes please," she said with that soft expression that always followed an orgasm on her face.

He kissed her, pulling her face down and she slid out of the chair and into his lap as he did. He had been kneeling in front of her and she straddled his lap as she fell against him. He picked her up and put her back on the edge of the chair. If he sat up on his knees then he could line up with where he wanted to be. He didn't undress, they had probably overstayed their welcome as it was, but he pulled enough clothing open to be able to pull himself loose. 

Sliding into her was a relief. She sat up and pressed back so when his head fell forward with the sensation her shoulder was there to land on. She wrapped her arms around him as he started to move.

The chair was too slippery with the plastic cover and she kept slipping away when he tried to move too much. She was laughing and he sighed hard in frustration. 

She pushed him back. It took him a moment to figure out what she wanted but once he figured it out, he lay down a stack of rugs nearby. She followed him and  settled down over him so he was the one flat out on his back on the floor of a shop he didn't know the name of. She settled down so she was sitting up straight and he could see her entire body from where he disappeared inside her all the way up to her smile. 

“I like this dress,” he said. 

He reached out and grabbed the fabric on either side of her body. He wrapped the long tie around his hand a few times and tugged her closer so she was leaning over him and had to brace a hand on his chest to keep from falling.

“Don’t be crass,” she told him. 

“Says the girl with her knees spread and her clothing most of the way off,” he said. 

“Try not to remind me where we are, I’m going to need to get dressed and go find the nearest church,” she said. 

“If we're going to start doing this in other places, a church would be an interesting place. Maybe the choir loft or a confessional?” he said and he used her dress to pull her the rest of the way down so he could kiss her. 

"This is not going to be a thing," she said into his mouth before she kissed him back. 

Her hips were tight against him and the feeling of her body was making it difficult to think straight. She started to move without breaking the kiss. Her mouth was gentle but she used the angle he held her at as leverage as she moved against him. He let go of the fabric in favour of holding her around the waist. It was a small movement, a rise and fall of her hips but it was fast and he was buried deep inside her and the entire sensation made him dizzy. 

She rode him to her own orgasm. He just lay back and let her take control until she came. She collapsed into him and he held her for a moment as she breathed hard into his neck. 

He flipped her over. They ran out of space on the stack of rugs but he was close to his own release and not as conscientious as he might have liked to be. He caught her head so it didn’t hit the floor but he pinned her down against the concrete without even stopping long enough to think about finding her someplace softer. 

“Don’t stop,” she whispered in his ear. 

He knew enough about her body to know she was fighting for the composure it took to say that. His hand was a little clumsy as he turned her face in towards him and kissed her but he forced himself to pause and make the kiss last so she could have a moment of rest. He was still kissing her as he slid back inside. She gasped into his mouth, still too close to her own orgasm but she held him close and murmured something encouraging into his ear. 

“You’re sure you’re ok?” he asked. 

“Perfect,” she said. 

“Really?” he asked. 

“Hurry up or we’re going to miss our lunch date and Li will never let me live it down,” she said and something about the mock seriousness in her tone made him less anxious about hurting her. He laughed and tightened his hold on her waist to keep her still as he thrust into her as hard as he could. She cried out against his neck and locked her knees around his waist at the same time. He took her comment that she was fine at face value as he picked up where they had left off. 

He went hard. He was close and once he let his worry go about hurting her, that physical need took over. She held onto him, murmured against his neck, tensed and relaxed and tensed again as he thrust into her. He could hear the sound of skin against skin as much as he could feel it. 

He forced himself a little slower because making this last was worth his body’s own frustration. She gasped and pressed into him when he slowed. Her little wordless protests made him slow even more to kiss her temples and her cheeks and her partially open mouth. He reached down between their bodies to push her to another orgasm when he felt himself get close. She arched and cried out and he kept her at that point as he let his self control go and finished hard and fast against her. 

She was left panting and limp against the floor. Her hair was spread around them on the concrete and Jem leaned down to kiss her. Hard and fast and messy. She was met him with more of the same. They lay on the floor and breathed hard. 

“We need to get up,” Tessa said. 

“I can't get up, give me a second,” Jem said. 

“You only get one. We’re in the storage room of a housewares shop, sooner or later someone’s going to need some special kind of spatula and the clerk is going to have to come in here,” she said. 

“I don’t particularly care about their spatula,” he said. 

“Then care about how bad I am at magic. I can seal a door but those spells that warlocks can cast that make people not want to come through a sealed door? I cannot do those. I am not that good. We’re going to get caught,” she said. 

“Hmmm,” he said. 

“No, no sleepy murmuring, we're in a shop, get off me and help me find my underwear,” she hissed in his ear. 

He laughed and pushed himself up. She was flushed and her hair was in disarray and he did not want to go back into public places. He wanted to stay here with her looking like this. He didn’t even care where here was. She shoved him in the chest and he stumbled to his feet and started resetting his own clothing before he joined her in the attempt to reset her own.

It took magic to make sure that when they slipped back out of the storeroom, what they had been doing wasn’t obvious to anyone who looked at them. Jem kept his fingers laced with hers as they walked away because even if no one else knew, he did. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because I research the most random thing for my fics, the mall they're in is CentralWorld in Bangkok. I did not do enough research to know what shop they're screwing in. This has been sitting in my drafts ever since the formatting got eaten, I'm also SURE that there was a scene on the bus on the way to mall but I can't find it anywhere.


End file.
